Decoded: With leg space in Gujarat Cabinet, BJP eyes troubleshooting and 2024 Lok Sabha elections

Hours after Bhupendra Patel took oath as the Chief Minister of Gujarat on Monday for a second straight term, he allocated portfolios to his 16 ministers, thereby forming the second smallest Council of Ministry under the BJP rule in the state since 1998. 

The Cabinet formation saw induction of some fresh faces, while some senior party leaders such as Ramanlal Vora, Ganpat Vasava and Shankar Chaudhary, who were considered frontrunners for ministerial berths, were kept away.    

Several ministers from the previous Bhupendra Patel government failed to make a cut in the new 17-member Cabinet. These included names like Jitu Vaghani, Purnesh Modi, Kiritsinh Rana, Narensh Patel, Arjunsinh Chauhan, Jitu Chaudhary, Manisha Vakil, Nimisha Suthar, Gajendrasinh Parmar, Vinod Moradiya and Devabhai Malam. 

Explaining the reason behind their exclusion, a party leader was quoted by The Indian Express as saying: “Performance and competence seem to be the only reasons for their exclusion. None of them had performed as ministers. In fact, because of the incompetence of some of them, the party had to face a lot of heat during the campaign from the Aam Aadmi Party.”

The state Cabinet can still have 10 more ministers, which gives a clear indication that the BJP has kept room for correction measures, if need be. Also, it is quite possible that an expansion of the cabinet may come just ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, with the party eyeing electoral gains in Narendra Modi’s home state. 

“In 2002, Narendrabhai (then CM Narendra Modi) had a 15-minister Cabinet for over two years before expanding it. I think the Bhupendra Patel Cabinet will be expanded in two years, around the time of the Lok Sabha elections… So if the party high command decides to drop five-five ministers on grounds of non-performance, it could induct as many as 15 as per requirement,” a senior BJP leader was quoted by The Indian Express as saying. 

The 17-member Cabinet includes four Patidars (including the CM), seven OBCs, two belonging to the Scheduled Tribes (STs), and a representative each from Brahmin, Jain, Kshatriya and Dalit communities.     

The Council of Ministers has only one woman member - Bhauben Babariya - who was elected from the Rajkot Rural (Schedule Castes) Assembly seat. She has been given cabinet rank. 

The seven other Cabinet ministers are Kanu Desai, Rushikesh Patel, Raghvji Patel, Balvantsinh Rajput, Kunvarji Bavaliya, Mulu Bera and Kuber Dindor. Harsh Sanghavi and Jagdish Vishwakarma were sworn in as ministers of state (MoS) with an independent charge. 

Sanghavi was Minister of State for Home in the earlier Bhupendra Patel government. The six other ministers of the state are Parshottam Solanki, Bachu Khabad, Mukesh Patel, Praful Pansheriya, Kuverji Halpati and Bhikhusinh Parmar. Of these 16 ministers, four belong to the Koli community (Bavaliya, Khabad, Solnaki and Mukesh Patel), three are Patidars (Raghavji, Rishikesh and Praful), three OBCs (Vishwakarma, Parmar and Bera) and two are tribals (Halpati and Dindor). Sanghavi is a Jain, Desai a Brahmin, while Rajput belong to the Kshatriya community.