NEW DELHI, Dec 12: A 17-member BJP ministry headed by the chief minister Bhupendra Patel was installed in the office in Gujarat on Monday after the ruling party won the seventh consecutive term in the just-concluded state Assembly elections with a massive mandate securing 156 seats in the House of 182.
Besides Mr Patel, who was sworn-in as the chief minister for the second time, eight cabinet ministers, two ministers of state with independent charge and six ministers of state took the oath of office and secrecy administered by the governor Acharya Devvrat at the sprawling Helipad ground in the state capital city of Gandhinagar in the presence of galaxy of dignitaries led by the prime minister Narendra Modi.
Besides Mr Modi, a number of union ministers, chief ministers of several BJP-ruled states and top leaders of the BJP at the national and state levels attended the ceremony conducted by the state chief secretary Pankaj Kumar.
Among the prominent dignitaries present on the occasion were the union ministers Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani, Ramdas Athwale and Sarbananda Sonowal, the chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath, Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Maharashtra Eknath Shinde, Haryana Manohar Lal Khattar, Goa Pramod Sawant, Assam Himanta Viswa Sharma, Tripura Manik Saha, Karnataka Basavraj Bommai, Arunachal Pradesh Prema Khandu, Uttarakhand Pushkar Dhami and Manipur N Biren Singh, while the BJP was represented by the party national president JP Nadda and the state party chief CR Paatil.
While Kanubhai Desai, Raghavji Patel, Rushikesh Patel, Balwantsinh Rajput, Kuvarji Bavalia, Mulubhai Bera, Kuber Dindor and Bhanuben Babaria took oath as Cabinet Ministers, Harsh Sanghavi and Jagdish Panchal take oath as MoS with independent charge, and Parshottam Solanki, Bachubhai Khabad, Mukesh Patel, Praful Pansheriya, Bhikhusinh Parmar and Kunvarji Halpati took oath as Ministers of State.
Jitu Vaghani, Purnesh Modi and Jitu Chaudhari, were the top ministers of the previous government who have been dropped.
Mr. Patel won a second term as MLA from the Ghatlodia Assembly seat in Ahmedabad district by 1.92 lakh votes in this year’s election. In September last year, he had replaced Vijay Rupani as the Chief Minister after the party high command decided to revamp the entire cabinet dropping all the ministers and set up a new one under Mr Patel to avert any possible anti-incumbency factor after ruling the state for 27 consecutive years. The BJP’s victory with 156 seats was the highest ever for any political party bettering the erstwhile Congress record of winning 149 seats in 1985.
(Manas Dasgupta)