Vijay Rupani
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Anointment as CM
Factors in Rupani’s favour
The Times of India, Aug 06 2016
BJP selected Vijay Rupani as Gujarat's new chief minister, a move in keeping with the risk-taking style of party president Amit Shah as well as his ever-growing heft.
It also reflects Shah's belief that PM Modi's popularity on his home ground will help the party in the 2017 assembly polls and suggests that BJP may be looking for ways to overcome its traditional dependence on the in fluential Patel community .
It's also a personal blow to Nitin Patel, the most senior minister in the state. Patel had taken his elevation for granted and started “acting“ as the CM-designate, spelling out as his priorities as Anandiben Patel's successor. However, he ended up being Rupani's deputy.
TOI had reported on Wednesday that Rupani was the frontrunner to the CM's post. Patel's calculation was not without basis with popular wisdom holding that the party would replace Anandiben only with a fellow Patel, especially at a time when sections of the community, solidly aligned with the saffron rise in the state for close to two decades, appeared to be drifting away . That the estimate proved to be off the mark underlines the party's desire to move beyond the community .
Rupani is a Jain, a community with only a fraction of numbers that the Patels boast of in the electoral college.
He, however, scored over Nitin Patel on the efficiency quotient: a vital consideration because of the recognition that the party will have to move with urgency to repair the damage suffered under Anandiben, who took over from Modi after his election as PM.
Anandiben's tenure, lasting just over two years, was marked by lethargy and corruption charges, and appeared to have cost the party some of the goodwill it had amassed under her predecessor.
Rupani's closeness to Shah, who had an important say in settling the succession issue, is expected to bring back the synergy between the government and the organization which was the hallmark of the Narendra Modi regime but ceased to be on display after May 2014.
In fact, many in the party feel that Shah, who functioned as the powerful minister of state for home in the Modi government, will be the decisive player in the Rupani regime, playing the intervenor and arbiter that he could not be under Anandiben because of their tense equations and the seniority of the outgoing CM.
The choice of Rupani fits the pattern that the Modi-Shah duo followed in picking chief ministers of BJP-ruled Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, choosing Devendra Fadnavis, Manohar Lal Khattar and Raghubar Das from non-dominant communities.They were given the top jobs in their respective states on the leadership's assumption that their caste background would not be a handicap for the party so long as they performed. In fact, their being caste-neutral was seen as an advantage since it obviated the need for the party to choose from among candidates of historically influential communities.
Modi and Shah have reasons to believe that they have greater headroom in Gujarat to try the risky experiment. The state is defined by the influence of Hindutva ideology, one of the factors which helped Modi overwhelm the effort to mobilize Patels against the marginalization of the community patriarch, his predecessor Keshubhai Patel, in the BJP. A substantial section of Patels, steeped in Hindutva and impressed by Modi's scorecard as CM, rebuffed a determined effort to mobilize them along community lines.
Simultaneously , by choosing not to replace Anandiben with another Patel, the party can hope to attract others, especially OBCs who are resentful of the dominant community trying to muscle its way into the quota scheme despite enjoying enormous economic and social clout.
Sequence of events
The Times of India, Aug 6, 2016
Kapil Dave
Gujarat gets new CM: Call from Delhi changed script
It was an unexpected climax to the drama over the selection of Gujarat's new chief minister on Friday. A 20-minute phone call - received some time during the closed-door meeting held at the state BJP HQ, Shri Kamalam - apparently cut off the chances of Nitin Patel, who was till 3.30 pm the most likely successor to Anandiben Patel.
Sources in the BJP said that the party leadership's decision to make Vijay Rupani the chief minister and to appoint Nitin Patel as his deputy was a compromise to quell tensions between Anandiben and BJP national president Amit Shah. Shah was present at the meeting with Rupani (the state BJP head at the time) and senior party figures such as Nitin Gadkari and the BJP's representative in charge of Gujarat affairs, Dinesh Sharma. The party's national joint general secretary, V Satish; Nitin Patel; and Saroj Pandey also attended the meeting. Anandiben arrived some 20 minutes late. Sources said an argument broke out between Shah and Anandiben over the choice of the CM. "While Anandiben blamed Rupani for causing serious problems for her govern ment, Shah defended him robustly ," a source said. Just as tension was about to explode, Satish received a phone call from Delhi -believed to be from the PMO. Satish exited the room. It was about 5pm when he returned. After another 20 minutes, the name of the new CM was announced to the BJP MLAs assembled in the hall.
