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Journalism of Courage
Months ahead of the Gujarat Assembly elections, Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel on Sunday stripped two of his senior Cabinet colleagues – Rajendra Trivedi and Purnesh Modi — of their key portfolios of Revenue and Road & Building, respectively. Though no specific reasons have been assigned for the move, party insiders say “inefficiency” could be a possible reason why the two ministers lost their Cabinet berths.
While Trivedi, 68, a two-time MLA who has had a steep growth curve in the BJP until now, was seen as the No 2 in the Cabinet, Modi was a first-timer in the Patel ministry.
Rajendra Trivedi
In September last year, when Bhupendra Patel was sworn in as CM, replacing the entire Vijay Rupani government, Trivedi, a two-time MLA from Raopura constituency in Vadodara, was given the key portfolio of Revenue, considered the most sought-after after the CM post. He also handled Law & Justice, Legislative & Parliamentary Affairs, and Disaster Management.
The state government had also informally appointed Trivedi, along with Education Minister Jitu Vaghani, as its spokespersons.
Trivedi was vice president of the Vadodara unit of the BJP between 1993 and 1996, and was also twice elected to the municipal corporation — from 1995 to 2000 and from 2005 to 2010.
A lawyer by training, after the 2002 riots, he had defended several of the accused, including in the Best Bakery and Gulbarg cases.
Before being sworn in as Cabinet minister in the Bhupendra Patel government, Trivedi was minister of state in the Rupani government. He was also Speaker of the Gujarat Assembly between February 2018 and September 2021.
But Trivedi came into his own in the last one year, as the flamboyant Cabinet minister who often went live on Facebook as he paid surprise visits to various offices of the Revenue department.
In January this year, under Trivedi’s directions, around 14 complaints had been registered against a group of people, including lawyers of Surat and Navsari, for allegedly pocketing the compensation amount that was due to farmers in Navsari whose land had been acquired for the Vadodara-Mumbai Express Highway project.
In November last year, during a controversy over selling non-vegetarian street food, Trivedi had created a stir when he equated street vendors with land grabbers. Both the CM and Gujarat BJP president C R Paatil had to made public statements to douse the fire that followed Trivedi’s remarks. Paatil had then said ministers should desist from making such controversial statements.
Speaking of the action against Trivedi, a senior party office bearer said, “I believe the only reason why Trivedi’s Revenue portfolio was taken away from him is poor performance and pendency of work. There were a lot of complaints against him in this regard, I have heard.”
Purnesh Modi
Like Trivedi, Modi, 57, is a lawyer by training. A two-time MLA from Surat (West) constituency, he was made minister for the first time when Bhupendra Patel took over as CM. Earlier, in the previous Rupani government, he was the parliamentary secretary.
Before being appointed Cabinet minister, Modi’s claim to fame was his criminal defamation case against Rahul Gandhi for the Congress leader’s “Modi as surname” remark. During a 2019 rally in Kolar, Gandhi had allegedly said, “Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi, Narendra Modi…how come they all have Modi as their common surname?”The case is still on.
As minister, Purnesh was allotted the portfolios of Road & Building, Transport, Civil Aviation, and Tourism & Pilgrimage Development.
In July, Modi had launched an app named after himself to enable people to reach out to the government over complaints regarding roads and building infrastructure.
It’s this that seems to have gone against him as, sources said, the overwhelming complaints that poured in from the public — about bad roads and lack of action — caught the eye of the leadership.
A senior state BJP leader said on condition of anonymity, “There were numerous complaints of roads not being in good shape and the slow pace of work that the party organisation was receiving. The major reason for all this was the minister’s overbearing attitude towards his party workers. The party couldn’t have afforded this in an election year.”
While Trivedi and Modi have lost their prized portfolios, what is more damaging for them is their prospects in the upcoming Assembly elections.
“The party high command has given a message of zero tolerance for inefficiency and corruption in governance. There is every possibility that the two ministers may have also lost the chance to get a ticket in the upcoming elections. This will prove as a warning for all the other ministers in the government,” said a senior party leader.
