In the December 2022 Gujarat Assembly elections, when the incumbent BJP returned to power by sweeping the polls, winning 156 of 182 seats — the largest-ever majority in the state’s history — many expected that the new ministry would be jumbo-sized in sync with the scale of the party’s victory. Instead, Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel constituted a small ministry of 16 members, as he himself took charge of over a dozen portfolios, including those like urban development and revenue which had earlier been with other ministers.
The new 25-member ministry that CM Patel formed on Friday is comparatively younger, has a powerful Deputy CM in Harsh Sanghavi, and has more women, Dalit and tribal faces. The Cabinet overhaul has come ahead of the upcoming local elections, which would be a critical bellwether for the BJP amid rising challenges from its rivals Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the run-up to the 2027 Assembly polls.
The Congress has begun strengthening its party organisation in Gujarat under the direct supervision of Rahul Gandhi, who has been making frequent visits to the state. The AAP won from Visavadar in the recent by-elections to two Assembly seats.
The immediate concern for the BJP is the local body elections. The BJP government has announced nine new municipal corporations in addition to the existing eight, most of which will go to the polls along with other civic and panchayat bodies in January-February next year.
Unlike September 2021, when the BJP leadership had got the then CM late Vijay Rupani and his entire Cabinet resign to make way for Bhupendra Patel and his team barely 15 months before the Assembly polls, which had upset a BJP section, the party this time, while continuing its rejig, seems to be torn between countering “anti-incumbency” and projecting Gujarat’s image as a “politically stable state”.
“This (Cabinet reshuffle) has certainly brought in some enthusiasm… Otherwise, how will a party that has been ruling a state for 30 years, survive? Kuchh toh naya karte rehna padega na (something new will have to be done),” said a government insider.
After the Rupani government’s exit, this reshuffle is being seen as the biggest overhaul in the state BJP dispensation. In the Patel government’s first term, two ministers, Rajendra Trivedi and Purnesh Modi, were ousted following complaints of “inefficiency”.
While the reasons given for the reshuffle sound similar, the BJP decided to use a different strategy this time, party sources said. All 16 ministers were asked to submit their resignations on Thursday, and hours before the swearing-in Friday, six of them were told their resignations were not accepted with 19 new faces being also called to take oath as ministers. This helped in playing down the optics of “removal of unwanted ministers”, sources said.
A party leader said, “To begin with, almost all the MLAs have won in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, so this will be a chance for some of the first time MLAs who have been taken as ministers to show their work and influence. Secondly, those who were taken from the Congress on the promise of ministerial berths had to be given a chance too”. In the new BJP Cabinet, Arjun Modhwadia is the only minister picked from the latest group of Congress turncoats, unlike the previous one which had at least three ex-Congress leaders, of whom Kunwarji Bavaliya has been retained this time too.
A senior BJP leader said, “Even today the overhaul was necessitated because of complaints of corruption against certain ministers. The government was seen as weak for not acting. However, if action had been taken only against these ministers, it might have caused disaffection — so, by saying that we are bringing in change, was the best way to do it”.
For instance, two sons of panchayat minister Bachu Khabad, who was among the 10 ministers dropped in the new Cabinet, were arrested in an alleged MGNREGA scam in Dahod district, which gave fodder to the Opposition to attack the BJP.
In his reaction to the ministry reshuffle, the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC)’s president Amit Chavda said, “If more than half the ministers were seen as inefficient and were dropped mid-term, so if their departments had reported irregularities, why did the government wait for two-and-a-half years to take action? Why didn’t the BJP remove Bachubhai Khabad the next day after his son was arrested?”
The new Cabinet has at least half the ministers in their 50s or younger, which is “representative of the present-day demography where we have a larger younger population,” an official noted.
As for CM Patel, things have not been the same on a personal front since his son suffered a brain stroke in 2023, following which he had reportedly offered to step down. “Patel has a clean image and has remained non-controversial which did not give any reasons to the party to replace him
some years before the 2027 Assembly polls,” say several BJP leaders. This is also why “it has not mattered”, they claim, that both the CM and new state BJP president Jagdish Vishwakarma are from Ahmedabad.
Earlier this month, Vishwakarma took the helm from Union minister C R Patil, who stepped down as the state party chief after completing a successful stint lasting for more than five years, during which he was said to have wielded control on the government too.
Bringing in Sanghavi as the Deputy CM and allotting him key portfolios, including home, would help “unburden” the CM, who would now hold fewer portfolios, said a party leader. “This is also a trial run for Sanghavi for whom the party might have a bigger plan,” he added.