Gandhinagar: Governor Acharya Devvrat administered oath of office to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Bhupendra Patel on Monday as the Chief Minister of Gujarat for a second straight term in Gandhinagar in a grand ceremony attended by a galaxy of saffron leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union ministers, and CMs of BJP-ruled states.
Sixteen other ministers, including eight of cabinet rank, were also sworn in. The new entrants include 11 former ministers. The oath taking ceremony was held at the Helipad Ground near the new Secretariat. Patel was sworn in as 18th Chief Minister of Gujarat which is under the right-wing regime since 1995.
The Cabinet ministers who took oath include Kanu Desai, Rishikesh Patel, Raghvji Patel, Balvantsinh Rajput, Kunvarji Bavaliya, Mulu Bera, Kuber Dindor, and Bhanuben Babariya. Harsh Sanghvi and Jagdish Vishwakarma were sworn in as ministers of state with an independent charge.
The six other ministers of the state include Parshottam Solanki, Bachu Khabad, Mukesh Patel, Praful Pansheriya, Kuverji Halpati and Bhikhusinh Parmar. Of these 16 ministers, four belong to the Koli community (Bavaliya, Khabad, Solnaki and Mukesh Patel), three are Patidars (Raghavji, Rishikesh and Praful), three OBCs (Vishwakarma, Parmar and Bera) and two are tribals (Halpati and Dindor).
Babariya belongs to a Scheduled Caste community, Sanghvi is Jain, Desai a Brahmin, and Rajput a Kshatriya. Patel went straight to the PM soon after he signed the official note on stage and was congratulated by Modi. "This is an energetic team which will take Gujarat to even newer heights of progress," Modi said in a tweet, sharing pictures from the ceremony.
Of the 11 former ministers who were inducted into the Bhupendra Patel government 2.0, seven were part of the government led by him from September 2021 to December 2022. They are Harsh Sanghavi, Jagdish Vishwakarma, Kanubhai Desai, Rushikesh Patel, Raghavji Patel, Kuber Dindor and Mukesh Patel.
Four others including Solanki, Bera, Khabad, and Bavaliya had served as ministers in the BJP governments in the past. Top BJP leaders, including Union ministers and chief ministers of the party-ruled states, attended the swearing-in ceremony. In the recently-concluded Gujarat Assembly elections, the BJP won a seventh straight term by winning record 156 seats in the 182-member House. The Congress won 17 constituencies and AAP 5.
Earlier on Friday, Sexagenarian Patel resigned as the CM along with his entire cabinet to facilitate the formation of a new government. He was elected as the leader of the BJP legislative party on Saturday, following which he met the governor and staked the claim to form the next government.
Patel won the Ghatlodia seat with the highest margin of 1.92 lakh votes in the elections. A low-profile BJP leader and the first from the Kadva Patidar sub-group to become CM, Patel replaced Vijay Rupani in September 2021. For Patel, Modi's campaign rhetoric was "Narendra will work hard so that Bhupendra can break Narendra's record."
