Gandhinagar: Newly sworn-in Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel has dropped many prominent BJP faces from the Cabinet, which has 17 ministers, including five from Saurashtra. The new ministers took charge after a formal swearing-in ceremony on Monday. There has been no change in some of the ministers' portfolios.
The 17 newly sworn-in ministers in Patel's second term have collectively received 52 portfolios. The quota of six MLAs from the Saurashtra region has been retained in the new Cabinet, including Raghavji Patel, Mulu Bera, Parsottam Solanki, Kunvarji Bavaliya and Bhanu Babaria. However, no BJP MLA from Surendranagar, Porbandar, Gir Somnath and Botad has been included in the Cabinet.
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The prominent faces dropped include Rajendra Trivedi, Jitu Vaghani, Purnesh Modi, Kiritsinh Rana, Naresh Patel, Pradeep Parmar, Arjunsinh Chauhan, Brijesh Merja, Jitu Chowdhary, Manisha Vakil, Nimisha Suthar, Arvind Raiyani and Kirti Vaghela. Apart from surprise drops, there have been a few surprise debutants, too, including three faces from the Rajkot village. It was expected that cricketer Ravindra Jadeja's wife Rivaba Jadeja would get a representation from Jamnagar. However, Bhanuben Babaria has been selected as the only woman minister in the new Cabinet.
