Vijay Rupani To Continue As Chief Minister Of Gujarat; Nitin Patel To Be Deputy CM

Vijay Rupani will continue as the Chief Minister of Gujarat and Nitin Patel will continue holding the office of the deputy chief minister.

The decision was taken in a meeting of newly elected MLAs of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gandhinagar on Friday. The meeting was attended by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and party general secretary Saroj Pandey.

Rupani was made the chief minister in 2016 following the resignation of Anandiben Patel. He retained the Rajkot-West seat in the just-concluded assembly elections in the state.

Though Rupani was always a frontrunner to the post, names of other leaders were also doing the rounds.

"There's a procedure of consultation in the party. I asked members if there were any alternatives they wanted to name. Since there were none, the two (Rupani and Patel) were declared as unanimously elected," Jaitley told the media at a press briefing.

In the elections, the BJP won 99 seats as against 115 in 2012. Though it registered its sixth straight victory in the state, the party didn’t show a strong performance in the rural areas.

According to The Times of India, the oath-taking ceremony is likely to take place on December 25 – the birthday of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.