Janjivan Bureau / Gandhi Nagar: In a complete overhaul of the state cabinet, 26 new ministers of the Bhupendra Patel-led government in Gujarat took oath on Thursday at the Raj Bhavan in Gandhinagar.
The ceremony was postponed on Wednesday after “upset sitting ministers, who were to be dropped to take care of the anti-incumbency factor”, objected to the move. Noticeable among those dropped include Deputy chief minister Nitin Patel.
The new cabinet has five MoS with Independent charge and nine MoS.
Among inducted into the Bhupendra Patel Cabinet include former Gujarat BJP chief Jitubhai Vaghani and Assembly Speaker Rajendra Trivedi. Politically significat Saurashtra and South gujarat region got maximum berths in the Cabinet. The present state BJP chief C R Paatil comes from South gujarat.
Party sources said that the party was restorting to no repeat theory to beat the anti-incumbency factor though it has caused much eartburn among some old-timers.
Earlier, the swearing-in ceremony was scheduled to be held on Wednesday. According to reports, even the posters at the Raj Bhavan had mentioned September 15 as the date for the ceremony. However, they were taken down Wednesday afternoon.
The new ministers:
Jeetu Vaghani, (Bhavnagar West), Rishikesh Patel (Visnagar), Purnesh Modi (Surat) Gajendrasingh Parmar (Prantij), Vinoobhai Moradia (Katargam, Surat), Manisha Vakil, (Vadodara city), Arvind Rayani (Rajkot East), Harsh Sanghavi (Majora, Surat), Deva Malam (Keshod), Jagdish Panchal (Nikol), Kuber Dhindor (Santrampur), Kanubhai Desai (Pardi), Pradeep Parmar (Asarwa), Kirtisinh Jhala (Kankrej), Raghavji Patel (Jamnagar rural), R C Makwana (Mahua), Naresh Patel (Gandevi), Jitu Chaudhary (Kaparda), Brajesh Merja (Morbi), Kiritsinh Rana (Limdi), NImisha Suthar (Morwa Hadaf), Arjunsinh Chauhan (Mehamdavad), Rajendra Trivedi (Raopura), Dr Nima Acharya (Bhuj), J V Kakadiya (Dhari), Mukesh Patel