The man and his affable smile have disappeared forever now. The former Gujarat chief minister was on board the Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad Thursday afternoon. He was 68.
The crash brought to a cruel end an almost three-decade political career whose high point came in 2016 when he was made the chief minister of the state. Before that he served as Rajya Sabha member between 2006 and 2012.
After Rupani completed his term in Rajya Sabha in 2012, Modi, then the Gujarat chief minister, made him chairman of the Gujarat Municipal Finance Board.
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The 2014 challenge & Rupani’s rise
Rupani worked for the party in the challenging Saurashtra region in the 2014 polls and the party performed well. A few months later, he worked intensively to wrest back the Junagadh local body from the Congress, snatching from the party the only local body it held in the state.
Rupani’s standing rose within the party and Modi, now the prime minister, recognised his efforts. He fielded him from the Rajkot West bypoll in October 2014 after sitting MLA Vajubhai Vala was made the governor of Karnataka.
Rupani won and was made the water supply minister in the Anandiben Patel cabinet.
The Rajkot West seat’s importance can be gauged from the fact that Modi contested his first assembly polls in the state from this constituency. Rupani was Modi’s campaign in-charge in the February 2002 poll.
In 2016, Rupani, who had by now served four terms as the general secretary of the Gujarat BJP, was made the state party chief. These were challenging times for the party.
The assembly elections were just about a year away and the BJP was desperate to prove it can maintain its hold over the state despite Modi, its most popular leader in Gujarat for years, now moving to national politics. The 2017 elections were about prestige for the BJP.
The Patidar quota agitation led by a young Hardik Patel was threatening to dent the party’s popularity and its voter base. Then BJP chief minister Anandiben Patel, who was seen taking tough measures against the agitators, was removed from office.
And who the BJP and Modi turned to? Vijaybhai Ramniklalbhai Rupani.
He was not the obvious choice though. Nitin Patel, who was the deputy chief minister then, was the front-running claimant, his surname bolstering his chances. As the talks of replacing the chief minister gained momentum, Patel had already started accepting congratulatory messages.
Rupani never thought he had any chance of becoming the chief minister. When this reporter asked him about this, he said, “I am happy”. Again, with a smile.
But the BJP and Modi surprised one and all when they announced Rupani, from the neutral Jain-Bania community, as Anandiben’s successor. He was in Rajkot to celebrate his birthday when his name was announced as the chief minister.
Rupani steered the BJP to victory in the December 2017 assembly polls, overcoming the headwind caused by the Patidar agitation and a resurgent Congress.
In the 182-seat assembly, the BJP won 99 seats. It was the lowest BJP tally in the state since it came to power, but enough for a majority. Rupani was picked as the chief minister again.
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‘Everybody’s friend’
Rupani’s next big political challenge in the state came in 2019. But he delivered once again, helping the BJP win all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The credit was given to Modi, and Rupani made no complaints.
“Whatever duty was assigned to him by the party, he tried to fulfill them without making a noise about it,” multi-term MP Haren Pathak, an Advani loyalist who was also a minister of state during the Vajpayee government, told ThePrint Thursday. “He was a man of organisation. He never had any issue with any leader. He was everybody’s friend. When Narendrabhai sent him to Rajya Sabha in 2006, he never said he achieved anything, like others do, to attract the limelight.”
During his second term, Rupani helped the BJP retain all eight municipal corporations and win civic body polls in the state. His tenure as the chief minister was without any major controversy even though he faced criticism for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
His administration faced serious questions about alleged mismanagement of oxygen supply which led to deaths in hospitals. His image was dented.
What also harmed him politically was belief in some quarters that he maintained a low-profile as chief minister and the government was run effectively by civil servants.
The BJP replaced him as chief minister before the 2022 assembly polls, with Bhupendra Patel taking over. Rupani accepted the party’s decision, without any complaint. He was later made the party’s Punjab in-charge, and it would remain his last organisational assignment.
Rajendra Trivedi, who worked in the first Rupani cabinet as sports and arts minister, recalled an incident. “Unlike other chief ministers, he was not intimidating. No worker ever felt under pressure thinking ‘CM saheb naraz ho jayenge (the chief minister will get angry). They spoke to him without fear,” Trivedi told ThePrint Thursday.
“Once I met the chief minister with an idea to launch a scheme for elderly pilgrims. He immediately said start the scheme. I made the plan for the Shravan Tirth subsidy scheme, which was started during his time,” he added.
“I proposed 50 percent state govt contribution with the rest 50 percent coming from the elderly people themselves. But, the chief minister intervened saying ‘they are elderly people, raise the state government’s contribution to 60 percent and keep theirs at 40. It was changed to 70:30 later. It means, he kept track on small details,” Trivedi further said.
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The RSS background
The BJP fought the 2022 assembly elections under state president C.R. Paatil, and broke the record of winning the maximum number of seats, by bagging 156. But Rupani sat alone at his residence, away from the limelight.
Gujarat BJP vice-president Janakbhai Patel told ThePrint Thursday, “He never showed he was the CM. His predecessor Anandiben Patel’s style of working was different. Before her, you have to understand the problem quickly. She was assertive before officials.”
“With Rupani, he would give a patient hearing and offer a solution. Maybe, because he was not too assertive,“ he said.
Born in Rangoon (now Yangon, Myanmar) in August 1956, Rupani joined a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Shakha as a schoolboy, before graduating to the BJP via the Sangh’s students wing—the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). His father was a ball-bearing trader in Rajkot.
Rupani became active in the RSS while studying in an arts college. He honed his political skills during the 1974 Gujarat Navnirman agitation, a sociopolitical movement led by students and the middle-class against economic hardships and corruption in public life.
The agitation soon spread to other states, particularly in Bihar, where socialist legend Jayaprakash Narayan extended support and gave a call for his “Total Revolution”.
The movement eventually led to the fall of the Indira Gandhi government and installation of the first non-Congress dispensation at the Centre under Morarji Desai. Rupani, who was then with the ABVP, was jailed for nearly a year during the Emergency.
Rupani made his electoral debut in the Rajkot municipal corporation elections in 1987. He became a councilor and served as the chairman of the RMC standing committee before becoming the mayor of Rajkot in 1996.
He was later made the in-charge of the Gujarat government’s committee on implementing its 20-point development programme. Later, he was made the general secretary of the BJP before being sent to Rajya Sabha in 2006.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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