Bhupendra Patel to take oath as Gujarat CM for the second time; PM Modi, Amit Shah to attend

Gujarat government formation: Bhupendra Patel will take oath as the Chief Minister of Gujarat for the second time on Monday. The oath-taking event will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The chief ministers of other BJP-ruled states are also expected to attend the event. 

Some new ministers could also take the oath along with Patel. They will take charge of their offices the very next day. The ministers will be administered the oath by Gujarat Governor Acharya Devvrat at the Helipad Ground near the new Secretariat in Gandhinagar at 2 pm. MLAs Harsh Sanghavi, Kanu Desai, Raman Patkar, Purnesh Modi, Raghavji Patel, Rushikesh Patel, Shankar Chaudhary, Manisha Vakil, and Ramanlal Vora are among those expected to be inducted in the Gujarat government. 

Called ‘Dada’ by his followers, Patel is a low-profile leader and the first one from the Kadva Patidar sub-group to become the Chief Minister. He replaced Vijay Rupani in September 2021. The soft-spoken leader won the Ghatlodia seat with a margin of over 1.92 lakh votes in the recently concluded Gujarat elections. 

Gujarat election results

In these assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a landslide majority with 156 out of 182 seats. With this, the BJP broke its own record of winning 127 seats in 2002, when Narendra Modi was elected as the Gujarat CM, and Congress’ 1985 tally of 149 seats. 

The Congress, however, had to be content with 17 seats whereas the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) could manage only 5 seats. Independents won three seats whereas the Samajwadi Party won just one seat. Counting for the Gujarat Assembly elections was conducted on December 8. These elections were conducted across two phases– phase one on December 1 and phase two on December 5. 

Also read: Bhupendra Patel elected BJP Legislature Party leader, to continue as Gujarat CM for second term

Also read: Bhupendra Patel: The soft-spoken Chief Minister returns to power in Gujarat