Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vijay Rupani on Tuesday took oath as the chief minister of Gujarat. Rupani had been the chief minister before the Assembly elections, in which the BJP retained power by winning 99 out of 182 seats.
Party leader Nitin Patel was also sworn in as the deputy chief minister in the ceremony, which was held at an open ground near the state secretariat in Gandhinagar.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP National President Amit Shah and the chief ministers of all BJP-ruled states attended the event. Union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad, Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh and Ram Vilas Paswan, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy Sushil Kumar Modi were also present.
Eighteen other ministers were also sworn in, 11 of whom are from the outgoing Cabinet and nine are new faces, NDTV reported. Among the minsters who took oath, seven are from Saurashtra, the region where the BJP lost the most number of seats.
A third of the Cabinet is made up of ministers from the Patidar community, according to Firstpost.
At the party’s core committee meeting on Friday, the BJP had announced that all MLAs present had unanimously decided to choose Rupani and Patel to lead the Gujarat legislature.
The Congress won 77 seats in the Gujarat elections, its best performance in 35 years.
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