Gujarat elections: BJP’s anchor in Surat, the minister who lost a key portfolio

Purnesh Modi was stripped of the Roads and Buildings department in August because of the poor condition of major highways during monsoon.

Surat West is considered one of the most secure Assembly seats for the BJP and Purnesh Modi will look to retain the seat for the party. (Express file photo by Nirmal Harindran)

Having won the Surat West seat twice, Purnesh Modi, 57, a qualified lawyer, was given a Cabinet berth for the first time in the Bhupendra Patel government in September 2021 but was stripped of the all-important roads and buildings portfolio 11 months later. Surat West is considered one of the most secure Assembly seats for the BJP and Modi will look to retain the seat for the party.

Modi started his ministerial innings on a sprightly note, launching a mobile application in his name in October 2021 at Ambaji in Banaskantha district so that people could lodge complaints related to damaged roads. This July, as major highways in the state got pockmarked with potholes during the monsoon season, it dented the government’s image and social media was flooded with memes poking fun at the Gujarat development model. Around that time, Modi urged the public to lodge complaints using his app.

On August 15, the minister sent some 4,000 senior citizens from his constituency on a pilgrimage to Somnath as part of the Gujarat government’s Shravan Tirth Darshan Yojana, hiring 75 buses. Five days later, the roads and buildings portfolio was taken away from him.

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A member of the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) belonging to the BJP said at the time that Modi was trying to establish himself as “bigger than the party”. “He (Modi) was given Road and Buildings (department) which is very important as you directly come in contact with the public. If a minister does not entertain public issues, complaints go to the party organisation leaders and even to the chief minister,” the SMC member said.

Modi belongs to the Modhvanik community, the same as Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He joined the BJP in 1984 as a party worker from Wadi Falia in Surat’s walled city and was a municipal councillor between 2000 to 2005. He was the Surat city BJP president for two straight terms between 2010 to 2016. After the death of incumbent BJP MLA Kishor Vankawala in 2013, Modi was fielded from Surat West and he grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

In 2019, Modi filed a defamation suit against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a Surat district court for allegedly making defamatory comments about the prime minister’s surname at a rally in Karnataka.

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