Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel resigned on Wednesday evening after the BJP Parliamentary Board accepted her ‘offer’ to quit. The BJP’s highest decision-making body also authorised party President Amit Shah to pick her successor in consultation with the BJP Legislature Party which meets in Gandhinagar on Thursday.
The BJP also made it clear that Shah, who will attend the Legislature Party in his capacity as party chief as well as an MLA, is not in the race for the Chief Minister’s post. The party has deputed Union Minister Nitin Gadkari and senior leader Saroj Pandey to oversee the election of the new CM.
“Our (BJP’s) President is also an MLA. He will be present in the meeting. He will hold consultations, following which the successor will be decided,” Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu told reporters after the parliamentary board meeting.
To queries on whether Shah too was a contender for the CM’s post, Naidu said, “Such a question does not arise. He is the party President will remain party President. The party needs his leadership at the national level.”
Following the board’s decision, Gujarat’s first woman Chief Minister drove to the Raj Bhawan and submitted her resignation to Governor OP Kohli. Her resignation and Thursday’s meeting of the Gujarat Legislature Party sets in motion the process of election of the new Gujarat CM.
Among Anandiben’s probable successors are the BJP General Secretary in Gujarat Bhikhubhai Dalsania, a Patel leader from Jamnagar drafted into the BJP from the RSS, and senior ministers Nitin Patel and Vijay Rupani, the State BJP chief.
The political events come with a sense of déjà vu. After the 2001 earthquake, the BJP had replaced then incumbent Keshubhai Patel with Narendra Modi, amid intra-party bickering and the possibility of defeat in the 2002 Assembly polls looming large. Anandiben, too, is being “replaced” in the backdrop of the ruling party’s enfeebled political base, in the wake of massive agitations by the Patel and Dalit communities, a year before the 2017 Assembly polls. In fact, the BJP is likely to elect a new CM on a day when BSP chief Mayawati is visiting Gujarat to meet victims of the anti-Dalit violence in Una.
Interestingly, in 2001, the alleged corruption charges levelled against the Keshubhai family were major reasons for his replacement. Similar charges have been levelled against Anandiben’s family too.