With no strong opposition in Gujarat, unlike other states, the BJP’s uninterrupted governance and massive majority have given rise to anti-incumbency sentiment, allegations of corruption and infighting within the party.
In May, minister Bachubhai Khabad’s son, Balvant Khabad, was arrested for his alleged involvement in a Rs 71 crore MGNREGA scam, where some contracted agencies allegedly received payments from the government without finishing work or supplying goods.
During the monsoon months, several protests were held in the Saurashtra region and North Gujarat, and in July, the BJP’s Valsad district panchayat members held a unique protest by sitting on road potholes and chanting slogans against their own government due to infrastructure woes.
Recognising the growing public discontent against the government, the BJP reverted to its tried-and-tested formula.
“Before the next year’s civic and assembly polls, infighting, corruption charges, and protests in Saurashtra and north Gujarat have alarmed the government to course-correct by bringing fresh faces and reduce resentment among people. By replacing the cabinet, they can cool tempers and beat anti-incumbency against the government,” Ghanshyam Shah, a former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) professor, told ThePrint.
Shah added that the BJP’s big challenge was discontent within its own ranks.
“With the BJP at 162 seats, now the bigger task before the government is to fulfil the aspirations of its own people and MLAs. And due to the absence of a vibrant opposition, its own party men have started acting as the opposition. This was evident from the protests during last year’s Lok Sabha candidate selection, which forced the BJP to change its candidates in Vadodara and Sabarkantha,” he added.
Shah said another reason for the cabinet revamp was the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) win in the Visavadar seat despite the entire cabinet campaigning against the AAP. The AAP is now aggressively campaigning in 40 constituencies.
The recent farmers’ protest in Botad district has raised concerns about the government about the need for more regional balance in the cabinet ahead of the civic polls.
“The BJP considers civic polls as very important in Gujarat to maintain its dominance,” Shah said. “The party has institutionalised rotational leadership in civic bodies, changing mayors before their terms ended to give a chance to new faces. Since the AAP and Congress can pose a challenge in civic polls next year, the BJP needs a reboot in governance.”
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Tested formula
For years, the BJP has adopted a strategy of beating anti-incumbency by replacing ministers, the chief minister and councillors to remain in power across most states. In Gujarat, it has used this method more vigorously because the party has been in power in the state for almost three decades.
With local polls scheduled in Gujarat in January-February 2026 across 15 municipal corporations, 81 municipalities, 31 district panchayats and 231 taluka panchayats, the party is taking no chances.
The BJP’s experiment in Gujarat began in the 1987 Ahmedabad municipal election when the party ousted the Congress. The Ahmedabad election played a crucial role in the political careers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, who supervised the election.
Since then, it has used every tactic to hold its civic monopoly, including replacing councillors before civic polls, to stave off anti-incumbency sentiment.
In 2021, before the Gujarat assembly poll, the BJP removed the late Vijay Rupani and his entire cabinet, and gave Bhupendra Patel the chief minister’s job.
Former chief minister Keshubhai Patel lost his chair after the 2001 Bhuj earthquake led to massive resentment over the government’s rehabilitation work, resulting in losses in subsequent elections.
In 2001, the BJP lost the assembly by-election in Sabarmati, which fell under the prestigious Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency. It also lost 23 of 25 district panchayats and a majority of the taluka panchayats.
The same year, it lost two crucial municipal corporations—Ahmedabad and Rajkot—which it had ruled for 13 and 24 years respectively.
The BJP replaced Keshubhai Patel with Narendra Modi, and when Modi became prime minister in 2014, Gujarat was handed to Anandiben Patel.
But Anandiben’s handling of the Patidar agitation led to the alienation of the community, and the BJP suffered losses in rural elections in 2015, though it held six municipal corporations.
The Congress won 22 of 31 district panchayats, a big improvement from 2010 when it won only one. The Congress won 50 percent of the state’s 241 block-level panchayats a year before the Assembly polls.
The BJP replaced Anandiben with Vijay Rupani, who faced the same fate after the state’s Covid management caused resentment among voters.
To satisfy the Patidars ahead of the 2022 assembly polls, the BJP took no chances with Rupani and changed both the chief minister and his cabinet.
New cabinet
Another reason for the latest cabinet revamp cited by a BJP insider is that after the appointment of an OBC, Jagdish Panchal Vishwakarma, as BJP state president ahead of the February civic poll, the dominant OBC community of Saurashtra, the Koli and Ahir, did not respond enthusiastically to the decision.
The Viswakarma community constitutes only one or two percent of the population compared to the Koli community’s 24 percent.
“With Bhupendra Patel, a Patidar, and the new BJP president, an OBC, coming from the same Ahmedabad region, Saurashtra needs realignment amid growing regional imbalances, which is why the share increased from five ministers to nine ministers,” the party leader told ThePrint.
“This marks the first time that both the governance power centre and the organisational power centre are from one region. That is why it was necessary to make some tweaks, and important portfolios were assigned to other regions.”
The BJP’s new cabinet focuses on both regional balance and caste representation.
Of the 26 ministers, six are from the Patidar community, eight are from the OBC community, three are from the Scheduled Castes, and four are from the Scheduled Tribes. Three women are part of the government. The earlier cabinet had just one woman.
In the new cabinet, the Saurashtra-Kutch share has increased from five ministers to nine, while six are from South Gujarat, four from North Gujarat and seven from Madhya Gujarat.
The cabinet includes Rivaba Jadeja, and Arjun Modhwadia, a veteran Congress leader who switched to the BJP and was elected in a by-poll.
The BJP leadership felt that a more experienced face was needed to handle governance. As a result, former BJP president Jitu Vaghani and Arjun Modhwadia, who was earlier Gujarat Congress president, were brought in.
At the same time, younger faces were inducted for more energy and Harsh Sanghavi was rewarded with the deputy chief minister’s job due to his work.
“It was necessary for regional balance and to bring fresh energy into the cabinet. That is why new faces from all castes and regions have found a place in the cabinet,” BJP vice president Govardhan Zadafia told ThePrint.
“The Gujarat BJP is known for taking new organisational and governance initiatives to give chances to BJP workers in both the party and governance. This is the reason the reshuffle was done,” he added.
Gujarat is party ‘laboratory’, template for other states
In 2022, a few months after Rupani was suddenly asked to put his papers, BJP President J.P. Nadda said Gujarat was the party’s “laboratory” for governance and party organisation and the BJP will “implement this model across the country”.
Over the years, the Gujarat BJP has made many organisational and governance tweaks to maintain political control. It first used its “no-repeat” formula in the 2021 civic poll, barring those who had served three terms and were above the age of 60 from contesting. As a result, 80 percent were denied tickets.
Earlier, the party used the same strategy and denied tickets in municipal bodies to beat anti-incumbency sentiment when Modi was chief minister.
The BJP then used the same strategy in Delhi when it changed all councillors before the 2017 municipal poll to stay in power.
At the organisational level, BJP state chief C.R. Patil’s “page committee” experiment helped strengthen booth-level outreach and contributed to the party breaking Madhav Singh Solanki’s record in the assembly polls.
Not only at the councillor level, the BJP also adopted the same strategy at the organisational level and state party chief C.R. Patil’s famous “page committee” experiments broke Madhav Solanki’s record in the Assembly polls in 2022.
Under the page committee model, the party assigns a party worker to each page of the voter list—typically 30–40 voters—to ensure booth-level mobilisation.
Later, Madhya Pradesh and other states also implemented the “page committee” model. The BJP used its “no-repeat” formula for chief ministerial selection from Rajasthan to Madhya Pradesh, where Bhajan Lal replaced Vasundhara Raje and Mohan Yadav replaced Shivraj Chouhan as chief ministers after assembly polls.
Now, the BJP is known to deny tickets to 20 to 30 percent of sitting MLAs to beat anti-incumbency in most states.
“The BJP has used the musical chairs formula in other states too to minimise anti-incumbency,” political analyst Shah said. “But in other states, the BJP is not in such a dominant position. So, they don’t take such an extreme step of changing or dropping an entire cabinet or 80 percent of the cabinet. But denying tickets to seniors has become the new normal, allowing the party to rotate chairs to new aspirants.”
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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