The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has recently changed two chief ministers. One Uttarakhand and other in Karnataka but the change in Gujarat came as a surprise to many. In fact, there was no news of the change in leadership in the State in the offing when Union Home Minister Amit Shah was on a three-day trip to his home State Gujarat which began on August 29.
No doubt, that after the debacle in West Bengal, the party, especially the Modi-Shah duo, do not want to take any chances in the upcoming Gujarat elections which is due in the next 15 months. Agree, 15 months, in all probability by December next year is a long way away but the message is being sent to all the BJP ruled states that even a Chief Minister can be replaced if there is any iota of doubt on them.
In fact, the biggest message that “it is not all safe and permanent” has in all probability sent to the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and even Haryana top boss ML Khattar. Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls in March next year while in Haryana the last State elections were held in October 2019. To reshuffle the present Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh it will be difficult for the BJP for primarily two reasons. One that the UP CM has played very safely and has kept the agenda of the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS) as his top priority and secondly, there is hardly any big name to replace him with in the State and the only person close to his stature is Union Defence minister Rajnath Singh who has also been the Chief Minister of the State in the past.
The message to Yogi Adityanath would have been more vivid had Manjukh Mandaviya, who recently took over as the Union minister, been installed as a Chief Minister of Gujarat instead of the 57-year-old Bhupendra Patel who is a first time MLA from an assembly segment of the Parliamentary constituency of Union Home Minister Amit Shah. In fact, the media was also taken by surprise which the BJP threw at them by naming Bhupendra Patel as the next Chief Minister of Gujarat who has barely 15 months to prove that “Gujarat Model” of development is the best in the country.
However, the reason for replacement of the Chief Minister Vijay Rupani has surprised many. Speculation on why he was removed comes down to five major issues, the Patel agitation; COVID-19 mismanagement; failure in public perception management; friction with Gujarat BJP chief CR Patil and the party high command before the ensuing State Assembly elections.
The Patidar (Patel) agitation has not yet subsided in Gujarat ever since the Patidars started their agitation demanding reservation in government jobs in 2014, soon after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. Over this issue, Gujarat saw violence in August 2014 after 12 years. More than 14 people had lost their lives in the agitation and over 230 people including over 200 police persons suffered injuries.
The agitation spread and ultimately resulted in the chief minister Anandiben Patel losing her job as Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2016. It was then speculated that Nitin Patel, her senior-most cabinet minister, would be made the chief minister but Anandiben could not have her way. Union Home Minister Amit Shah appointed his man Vijay Rupani, a completely unexpected choice, as the chief minister. But as said in political terms politics sees strange bedfellows and it keeps changing with time.
This had hurt the Patel sentiments. Also, Vijay Rupani is a Jain and not a Patel and whispers in the corridors of power began that it was a mistake to have got Anandiben replaced. This sentiment intensified after Rupani did not do anything substantial for the Patel community in Gujarat. Nitin Patel, as his deputy chief minister, never questioned his party as to why he was dropped at the last minute in 2016 after he had already distributed sweets and was in celebration mode.
This move of replacing the Chief Minister of the big State like Gujarat which is very close to both Prime Minister and Union Home Minister is a big move for sending a message to all the BJP governed States that if a chief minister can be changed in Gujarat, surely it can be done in other States too.
