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Bhupendra Patel to be next Gujarat CM
The 59-year-old leader, a lawmaker from Ahmedabad, was elected as the BJP legislature party leader in Gandhinagar, a little over a year before assemble elections are to be held in the state. He will be sworn in as the chief minister on Monday, state BJP chief CR Paatil said.
First-time MLA Bhupendra Patel will be the next chief minister of Gujarat, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced on Sunday, replacing Vijay Rupani, who surprised many with his resignation a day earlier.
The 59-year-old leader, a lawmaker from Ahmedabad, was elected as the BJP legislature party leader in Gandhinagar, a little over a year before assemble elections are to be held in the state. He will be sworn in as the chief minister on Monday, state BJP chief CR Paatil said.
The proposal to elect him as the legislature party leader was moved by Rupani.
Sunday’s meeting was attended by most of the 112 MLAs of the BJP in the 182-member assembly, according to people aware of the developments. Patel later met Governor Acharya Devvrat at the Raj Bhavan and presented a letter to form the government, the people said.
“The BJP government has reached even the last person with its development work and I will continue to do so in coordination with the party organisation,” Patel said. He thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and BJP chief JP Nadda.
“I was not aware (about being picked) at all. I just told my family that I was going for the BJP meeting to decide on the new chief minister…,” Patel said.
While confirming that Patel will take oath on Monday, Paatil said that no decision has been taken about the deputy chief minister’s post so far. “Only Bhupendra Patel will take oath tomorrow (Monday). The number of ministers and everything else will be decided later.”
Patel contested his maiden assembly election from Ghatlodia constituency in Ahmedabad in 2017 and won by over 117,000 votes, the highest victory margin in the state during that election. His assembly constituency is part of the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat represented by Shah.
Paatil said Patel’s work at the grassroots level, his hold on the cooperative sector, association with party workers and administrative abilities were among the factors that led to his elevation.
In a tweet, Shah congratulated Patel, adding he is confident that the CM-designate will work on the path of development under Modi’s leadership.
BJP’s central observers Narendra Singh Tomar and Prahlad Joshi and party general secretary Tarun Chaug were present at the legislature party meet.
There was talk that Praful Khoda Patel, administrator of the union territories of Lakshadweep and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, and Mansukh Mandaviya, Union Health Minister, were among the contenders.
Rupani resigned from the CM’s post on Saturday. It was not clear what prompted the development in Modi’s home state, where elections to the 182-member assembly are due in December 2022.
With the sudden change of the guard, Gujarat joined a list of states where the central BJP brass opted to change the leadership ahead of assembly elections. After Karnataka, where chief minister BS Yeddiyurappa was replaced by Basavaraj Bommai ahead of the 2023 elections, and Uttarakhand, where the incumbent Trivendra Singh Rawat was first replaced by Tirath Singh and later by Pushkar Dhami, Gujarat CM Rupani on Saturday announced his resignation. Both Gujarat and Uttarakhand will pick new assemblies in 2022.
“His (Patel’s) candidature from Ghatlodia was by consensus of both Amit Shah and the Anandiben Patel groups in the BJP. So it appears that, as chief minister, he is acceptable to Amit Shah as well as all others,” political analyst Prakash Shah said.
With inputs from PTI
