Law Kumar Mishra
Ahmedabad, September 16
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) went for a major political overhaul in the state and dropped all the ministers in the Vijay Rupani cabinet to return to power in November 2022.
The cabinet of Bhupendra Patel, who was sworn in as Rupani’s replacement on September 13, was constituted on Thursday. The BJP made an attempt to prevent Gujarat voters to follow “No Repeat” in November 2022 assembly elections and decided not to repeat the cabinet colleagues of Vijay Rupani in the Bhupendra Patel ministry.
Governor Debabrata Shastri administered oath of office and secrecy to ten cabinet ministers, five ministers of State with independent charge and nine ministers of state. Speaker of Gujarat assembly, Rajendra Trivedi who resigned minutes before the swearing in ceremony was included as cabinet minister.
Bhupendra Patel, who is himself a first time MLA, had a hard time in selecting his team as the outgoing CM and deputy CM were pressing for inclusion of their colleagues in the new team. In the last minutes, names of Dushyant Patel and JP Kakadiya, MLA from Dhari in Amreli were withdrawn and the name of Purnesh Modi was forwarded to Raj Bhawan.
Due to pressure from the disappointed party leaders, the oath taking ceremony that was scheduled for Wednesday had to be stalled.
In the Bhupendra Patel, there are seven Patidars or Patels, six OBCs, four tribals, three Dalits, three kolis (EBCs), one Rajput (Darbar) and one Brahmin. President Ram Nath Kovind is also from koli caste.
In the 2017 assembly elections, BJP could reach the majority mark narrowly as Patidars in Saurashtra region had aggressively voted against BJP following the violent agitation led by Hardik Patel. Demonetization and GST had hit the traders and industrialists of Saurashtra badly and they had openly campaigned against the alleged anti-trader policies.
BJP with 97 seats in the 181 members assembly had returned to power with Vijay Rupani as incumbent CM with the support from Ahmedabad, Baroda and Surat voters.
