‘Grassroots leader’: Ex-CM died in crash
Union minister and his party colleague CR Paatil announced that Rupani , 68, did not survive the crash.
NEW DELHI: Seat 2D of the ill-fated Air India flight to London that crashed soon after take off from the Ahmedabad airport was occupied by the state’s former chief minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vijay Rupani.
For hours after that, his aides were searching for him, at the site of the crash and the hospital. The emergence of a survivor late in the afternoon raised everyone’s hopes. But early in the evening , Union minister and his party colleague CR Paatil announced that Rupani , 68, did not survive the crash.
Expressing grief, President Droupadi Murmu posted on X, “The country has lost the former chief minister of Gujarat, Vijay Rupani Ji in the tragedy. I express my heartfelt condolences to his family and admirers .”
Expressing his condolence, defence minister Rajnath Singh posted on X, “Deeply pained by the tragic demise of former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani ji in the unfortunate plane crash in Ahmedabad. He will be remembered as a grassroots leader who devoted his life for the development & welfare of his state. Condolences to his bereaved family.”
“The news of the demise of former Gujarat Chief Minister and senior BJP leader Shri Vijay Rupani ji in the unfortunate plane crash in Ahmedabad is extremely painful and shocking. This is an irreparable loss not only for Gujarat but also for Indian politics,” Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami posted on X.
It was an abrupt end to a career that many thought still had a third act to come.
The second act, of course, was the one that propelled Rupani into the national spotlight.
On August 5, 2016, a flurry of visitors, camera crews and party workers had assembled outside Gujarat BJP leader Nitin Patel’s residence , waiting to catch a glimpse of the man who was touted to be the state’s new chief minister. By the end of the day, a curious turn of events, preceded by hectic closed-door parleys, saw the spotlight shift from Patel to Rupani, a soft-spoken partyman, a former lawmaker and a legislator who was known for wearing several hats, but not his ambition on his sleeve.
As crowds began to swell outside Shri Kamalam, the party office in Gandhinagar, Rupani was named as the 16th chief minister of Gujarat, succeeding Anandiben Patel.
Rupani had his work cut out.
The Patidar agitation of 2015 had left an imprint on the state’s polity as well as the social fabric; and Rupani, a Jain leader, was appointed to assuage the concerns of both the pro- and anti-reservation groups. The powerful Patidar community which was seeking inclusion in the state’s OBC list had taken to the streets. Violence erupted across the state, and a change in leadership in the state was seen as a peace deal.
“He was not prone to making loud or controversial statements and true to his (Rashtriya Swayamsevak) Sangh training, he knew how to work silently behind the scenes. That itself was a key reason why the leadership chose him over Patel,” said a party colleague, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Rupani, who was re-elected as CM in 2017, when the BJP won the assembly election, steered the state till his abrupt removal in 2021, also had the difficult task of mending fences with the Dalits after the ghastly attacks on individuals from the community in Una hit headlines. The pandemic that wreaked havoc across the globe in 2020 saw Gujarat hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons. The High Cout rapped the government for gaps in critical care facilities that saw the death toll in the state mount. The economic slowdown, also a consequence of the pandemic, also did not augur well for the government that was to face an election in 2022.
All of that became his undoing.
People close to Rupani said just as he had accepted his elevation with grace, he showed no resentment when the leadership informed him of his exit, along with his council of ministers, few months before the state went to the polls.
The first act started in Burma, where Rupani was born into a trading family. Not long after, his family moved back to India. He studied at the Dharmendrasinhji Arts College and honed his ideology at the local Shakha run by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. He was, like many were at the time, a cricket enthusiast and a Kishore Kumar fan, and he dabbled in campus politics. He seemed set for a career in trading, but he found his calling in the stock market.
A second party colleague recalled Rupani’s association with the RSS and how he transformed from a reserved Sangh follower to an active student union member particularly during the Emergency, when he spent a year in jail.
His political career began with the election to the Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) in 1987 and he went on to become the mayor of Rajkot in 1996. Considered a protege of union home minister Amit Shah, the BJP’s ace strategist, Rupani rose to the position of general secretary of the state unit and was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2006. In the state’s politics he is credited for strengthening the party’s hold in the Saurashtra region.
A household name in Rajkot, the constituency he represented in the state assembly since 2014, Rupani raised eyebrows when he announced his retirement from electoral politics in November 2022, shortly after he was removed from the chief minister’s post.
His new role, he said, would be party work, and he spent the next few years working quietly behind the scenes, overseeing the party’s work in Punjab and Chandigarh.
Senior BJP leaders in Punjab said Rupani, who left Ludhiana on June 9 was first supposed to travel to England with his wife on June 1, but later deferred his visit and sent his wife to London, where their daughter resides.
“ Finally, Rupani ji left for Gujraat on June 9, and informed all of us that he would be travelling to London on June 11. We can’t believe that he is no more and was part of the ill fitted flight that crashed today” said senior vice president of the Punjab BJP unit, Subhash Sharma.
(With inputs from Ravinder Vasudeva)
