Gandhinagar: Care taker Chief Minister Vijay Rupani will continue to become Chief Minister of Gujarat while Nitin Patel will become Deputy Chief Minister. This decision was taken in meeting of BJP MLAs at State party headquarters Kamalam in Gandhinagar today in presence of observers Arun Jaitley, Saroj Pandey, Bhupendra Yadav and V.Satish among others. Arun Jaitley after the meeting announced election of Vijay Rupani as leader of legislature group while Nitin Patel as his deputy. Both names were proposed by senior minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama in a meeting today. Rupani’s election as legislature group was celebrated by BJP leaders in Rajkot which is the hometown of Rupani.

Rupani addressing the media persons after his election said: ‘Our party leadership put trust in us and handed over this responsibility on our shoulders. Our all elected MLAs unanimously assigned us this responsibility. We are thankful to them. I assure people of Gujarat that in next five years we will fulfill their aspiration and hopes. Gujarat will continue to be the role model of development. People have accepted Gujarat model of development. They have given clear mandate. This was a major challenge. Congress had polluted the atmosphere through casteism and divide. Nitinbhai has 17-18 year experience. I have worked in party organization for long. Nitinbhai’s experience will be useful. Both of us assure the people of Gujarat that Gujarat will further walk ahead on the path of development. We will seek convenient date from Governor and hold swearing in function followed by cabinet formation.’

During the interaction with media persons, Rupani said, party would do analysis of seats that it had lost. Rupani said even after 22 years, in a big state like Gujarat, party has got 49% vote share which is bigger than past. Rupani said this election was a major challenge but party has sailed through. Rupani in reply to another question said if there was arrogance, BJP would not had been elected to power after 22 years. Rupani said ‘sab ka sath sabka vikas’ and development will be two agendas of his government.

DeshGujarat