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Journalism of Courage
The oath-taking ceremony for the Gujarat Chief Minister will be held at 2 PM today in Gandhinagar today, where Bhupendra Patel will be sworn in for a second term. Following the BJP’s seventh consecutive victory in the state’s Legislative Assembly elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and other senior ministers are expected to be present at the ceremony.
Patel, 60, first took the oath in September 2021 as the CM. More recently, 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.
He won the Ghatlodia seat, part of the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency, with the highest margin of 1.92 lakh votes in the elections. Here are five things to know about the leader at the top leader of Gujarat.
* A low-profile BJP leader and the first from the Kadva Patidar sub-group to become CM, Patel, who was then a first-time MLA, replaced Vijay Rupani in September 2021 in a surprise move. This was seen as part of the party’s larger plan to carry out institutional changes across the different levels of leadership in the state before the 2022 elections.
The Patidar community, which forms BJP’s core vote bank, was seen as drifting away from it over the last few years. The 2015 Patidar agitation, which led to Hardik Patel becoming a significant leader, was also seen as a sign of the community’s dissatisfaction with the BJP. Bhupendra Patel hence became the fifth Patidar leader to become CM, after Anandiben Patel, Keshubhai Patel, Babubhai Patel and Chimanbhai Patel.
* Holding a diploma in civil engineering, Patel was in the real-estate business for around the last 25 years. His son-in-law runs a construction company. Patel started out by running a shop selling firecrackers in Dariapur in Ahmedabad’s walled city area and won elections from the Memnagar Nagarpalika in the 1990s, the area now a part of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation limits. He rose through the ranks to become the first chief minister from Ahmedabad – Gujarat’s business capital and its largest city.
* He fought his first major election in 2010 as a corporator from the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) and went on to become the standing committee chairperson.
* In 2017, his first Assembly election, Patel defeated Congress candidate Shashikant Patel by a huge margin of over one lakh votes. In part, his selection for the CM post was also given he has not been embroiled in any major controversy in his career.
* PM Narendra Modi had congratulated Patel on Twitter in 2021 on becoming CM, saying, “I have known him for years and have seen his exemplary work, be it in the BJP organisation or in civic administration and community service. He will certainly enrich Gujarat’s growth trajectory.”
