Mumbai: A day after the entire Gujarat cabinet, except for Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, resigned from the cabinet, the state government Friday inducted a new council of ministers, expanding the cabinet numbers to 26 from the earlier 17.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has won Gujarat seven straight terms, also re-introduced the post of a Deputy CM in Friday’s reshuffle, elevating Majura MLA Harsh Sanghavi to the post from a minister of state rank in the previous cabinet.
On Friday, 21 ministers took oath at the Gujarat Raj Bhavan. On Thursday, while the entire cabinet was asked to tender their resignations, CM Patel did not accept the resignations of four ministers from the outgoing cabinet, who now did not have to take oath afresh.
These include cabinet ministers Visnagar MLA Rushikesh Patel, Jasdan MLA Kunvarji Bavaliya and Pardi MLA Kanubhai Desai. The fourth minister from the outgoing cabinet who will continue to be part of the new cabinet and who did not take oath Friday is Bhavnagar Rural MLA Parshottambhai Solanki, who was a Minister of State of fisheries and animal husbandry in the outgoing cabinet.
Overall, the BJP government decided to retain six ministers from the earlier cabinet. Other than the four who did not take oath, this list includes Sanghavi, who was elevated to Deputy CM, and Praful Pansheriya, who took oath as minister of state. He was a junior minister in the outgoing cabinet too.
The new cabinet has increased representation of women, tribal MLAs as well as MLAs from the Saurashtra region, where the BJP wants to keep the growing influence of the Aam Aadmi Party in check.
Gujarat’s assembly has 182 members and can have a council of ministers of up to 27 MLAs.
“The new cabinet balances every region, caste and community in Gujarat. We have a good number of women MLAs, we have strong young under 40 faces like Harsh Sanghavi and Rivaba Jadeja,” Yagnesh Dave, Gujarat BJP spokesperson, told ThePrint.
Saurashtra in focus, more women & tribals
Friday’s cabinet expansion is the biggest since 2021 when the then CM Vijay Rupani had resigned with the entire cabinet, a little over a year before the 2022 assembly polls.
Friday’s reshuffle, sources said, was taking into consideration the local body elections in January-February 2026 across 15 municipal corporations, 81 municipalities, 32 district panchayats and 231 taluka panchayats.
Party leaders said, the BJP wanted to weed out any sentiment of anti-incumbency ahead of the polls, and also counter the narrative that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is growing stronger in regions such as Saurashtra. In June, AAP’s Gopal Italia clinched the Visavadar constituency in a by poll, narrowly beating the BJP’s Kirit Patel.
CM Patel’s fresh cabinet has nine faces from the Saurashtra region, including Bavaliya and Solanki who were part of the previous cabinet too. The outgoing cabinet had five leaders from Saurashtra.
In its bid to increase the representation from Saurashtra, the BJP has also brought back Jitubhai Vaghani, its Patidar MLA from the region. Vaghani, an MLA from Bhavnagar West and a Leuva Patidar, has been the Gujarat BJP president from 2016 to 2020. Vaghani, who led the BJP to victory in the 2017 assembly and 2019 Lok Sabha polls, was part of the first cabinet under Bhupendra Patel as a cabinet minister, in charge of education, science and technology and a spokesperson of the Patel government.
He was, however, dropped after a new council of ministers took over following elections and the cabinet was downsized to have just 17 ministers, including the CM.
Vaghani was the second person to take oath Friday after Deputy CM Sanghavi.
The representation from Saurashtra also includes Jamnagar North MLA Rivaba Jadeja, wife of cricketer Ravindra Jadeja, who joined the BJP in March 2019 and contested the 2022 assembly poll.
In Friday’s expansion, the BJP also included Porbandar MLA Arjun Modhwadia, who quit the Congress in March 2024 to join the BJP. Modhwadia took oath as cabinet minister.
Gujarat’s new cabinet has eight ministers from Other Backward Classes, four tribals, three from the Scheduled Castes, two Kshatriyas, six ministers from the Patidar community and one Brahmin and Jain each. Besides, the representation of women has also increased from one in the outgoing cabinet to three now.
The BJP dropped Rajkot Rural MLA Bhanuben Babariya, who had a cabinet minister rank in the outgoing cabinet. In the new cabinet, all three women—Jadeja, Darshana Vaghela and Manisha Vakil—have been inducted as junior ministers.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: BJP playbook, with a twist: (Almost) entire Gujarat cabinet resigns ahead of local polls
