All is not well in the BJP’s Gujarat unit. Despite returning to power for a record sixth consecutive term, albeit with reduced numbers, the party is yet to figure out how to ready itself for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, who was sworn in along with a 19-member team earlier this week, is trying to assert himself, while his deputy Nitin Patel is sulking, and it was not before much wrangling that portfolios were allocated.
Many ministers were seen trooping into the Secretariat Complex time and again, some trying to locate their new offices, as Rupani, Patel and the BJP’s State unit chief Jitu Vaghani struggled on Thursday to resolve the issue.
Hit by anti-incumbency, five ministers in the previous Rupani ministry and then Speaker Ramanlal Vora had lost the elections. The ruling party, therefore, was faced with a real ‘talent crunch’, and waited for directions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah. In this chaos, the first to be rewarded was the “power-behind-the-throne” K Kailashnathan, Chief Principal Secretary to the CM. Modi’s Man Friday, “KK” had retired from the IAS in 2013, but has been getting extensions repeatedly, this time for two years. He is seen as the eyes-and-ears of the PM in Gujarat.
Meanwhile, the first Cabinet meeting, deferred time and again, finally took place on Thursday night.
The list of allocated portfolios revealed the facts. Rupani, who was seen as a docile greenhorn in his first term, has successfully asserted his position, keeping a dozen portfolios. Deputy CM Nitin Patel has been cut to size. In the previous government, Nitin had been running the show with the help of fellow Kadwa Patidar and ex-CM Anandiben Patel due to Rupani’s ‘relative inexperience’. The deputy CM has lost the all-important finance portfolio to Saurabh Patel — a Leuva Patidar — who also got the prestigious energy department.
Saurabh, a relative of the powerful Ambani brothers, has staged a comeback, after having been left out in the cold in the previous ministry.
Amid murmurs of dissatisfaction from Vadodara and Surat MLAs about under-representation or “wrong” choices, the BJP leadership appeared directionless. Even senior ministers like Bhupendasinh Chudasma, who scraped through with a paltry majority of 327 votes, were seen angry at the “short-shrift” they got in portfolio allocation, while returnees like Kaushik Patel were blessed with the revenue ministry.
Nitin Patel, also stripped of the urban development portfolio, now has only six departments under his control. A tense, at times fuming, Nitin Patel was seen skipping a press briefing after the Cabinet meeting. Earlier, he used to brief the media routinely with glee.
Even as the newly-appointed ministers fought for portfolios, Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) leader Hardik Patel announced a Chintan Baithak (brainstorming meeting) on December 30, aimed at taking his reservation agitation to the next level.
Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani, now a Congress-supported Independent MLA, has been taking up popular demands ever since he was elected on December 18. Mevani, who has tried to epitomise the “angry young man”, has led mobs to the offices of senior officials and followed it up with prompt posts on the social media. On Thursday, he stormed into an office in Ahmedabad, demanding total prohibition — a demand raised originally by OBC leader Alpesh Thakore, who is now a Congress MLA.
Twice during the week, a maverick Mevani “advised” Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “retire from politics, renounce the world and go to the Himalayas” in view of his “advanced age” and leave the country to the younger generation to handle.