GANDHINAGAR: Newly sown-in chief minister of Gujarat Bhupendra Patel today unveiled his new cabinet and 24 ministers were administered the oath of office by Governor Acharya Devvrat.

The interesting thing about the new cabinet is that Patel has dropped all the minsters from outgoing CM Vijay Rupani's team and all fresh MLA's have been given ministerial berths. 

This is largely attributed to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) strategy of 'no repeat' formula, in which fresh faces in the party are given a chance to be ministers, especially in states where polls are to be held shortly, however, this policy did not go well with strategy senior leaders who reportedly objected leading to a delay of announcing the cabinet by one day.

The BJP had earlier said that the swearing-in ceremony of the new cabinet would be held in the afternoon on September 15 and adequate preparations were done at the Raj Bhavan, however, considering the anger of the party leaders it was decided to postpone the ceremony while it pacified them. 

Patel who was sworn in as the CM on September 13, himself is a first-time MLA from Ahmedabad, who replaced Rupani when he suddenly resigned on September 11. While several big-wigs of the party were expecting to be made the CM, Patel's elevation took many by surprise. 

More intriguing was that the party has also done away with the practice of having a deputy chief minister for the state that existed in the Rupani cabinet where senior party leader Nitin Patel held the post.

The newly inducted cabinet has 10 cabinet ministers including Rushikesh Patel, Raghavji Patel, Purnesh Modi, Kanubhai Desai, Rajendra Trivedi, Jitu Vaghani, Kiritsinh Rana, Naresh Patel, Arjunsinh Chauhan and Pradipsinh Parmar.