A day after his induction in BJP Government as senior Minister, disgruntled Congress leader Kuvarji Bavalia was on Wednesday allocated Water Supply, Animal Husbandry and Rural Housing portfolios by Chief Minister Vijay Rupani after weekly cabinet meeting.
63-year-old Bavalia who is also president of All India Koli Samaj had resigned from Congress party as well as Jasdan MlA on Tuesday andsported saffron scarf at BJP’s Gujarat headquarter – Shri Kamalam on Tuesday.
Within couple of hours of joining BJP, he took oath as senior Minister in Rupani’s Council of Minister. In the 20 member 2-tier Council of Ministers, Bavalia became 10th cabinet rank minister that also include CM Rupani, Deputy CM Nitin Patel, Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, RC Faladu, Ganapatsinh Vasava, Kaushik Patel, Saurabh Patel, Jayesh Radadia, Dilip Thakor and Ishwar Parmar.
As the strong Koli leader resigned as Congress MlA to become BJP minister, he will have to get re-elected within six months’ time inorder to continue on his post. It is worth mentioning that in order to accommodate the new inductee, CM Rupani tweaked senior Minister Faladu from whom Animal Husbandry portfolio taken away and has been given to Bavalia. From Wednesday onwards Faladu would hold Agriculture, Rural Development, Fisheries and Transport.
Similarly Minister of State Parbat Patel who was having Water Resources and Water Supply (both independent charges), would lose independent charge of Water Supply.
Entry of Bavalia in saffron fold would held the ruling party to make major dent in Congress’s Koli dominated bastions, especially in Saurashtra region in the upcoming 2019 lok Sabha polls. Four time MlA and former Member of Parliament is connected with few educational institutes. He is having relatively clean image within Koli community as well as other castes also.
Sources close to Bavalia said that despite the Koli leader’s historic win in 2009 lok Sabha polls from Rajkot constituency which is considered as BJP bastion, he was ignored by top Congress leadership and was neither made Union Minister in UPA-2 Government nor given any important position within the party. Despite the fact, he remainedwithin the party fold for almost one decade, but the Congress leadership continuously ignored him and finally he took the decision to join BJP, said a close aide of Bavalia.