Anandiben Patel to steer Gujarat's ship on her own

AHMEDABAD: After almost all Gujarat cadre bureaucrats, who had access to PM Narendra Modi, getting positioned in Delhi’s corridors of power, Anandiben Patel, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, is finally making her presence felt in the state, both as an administrator and a politician. While Arvind Sharma was the first to move from the CMO in Gandhinagar to PMO in Delhi, Modi appointed retired Gujarat cadre IAS officer PK Misra of the 1972 batch as the additional principal secretary to the Prime Minister.

The 65-year-old officer was the principal secretary to Gujarat chief minister between 2001 and 2004, before being moved to ministry of agriculture as its secretary. The other IAS officers moved to Delhi with PM include Rajesh Kishore, HK Das, Guruprasad Mohapatra and Hasmukh Adhia. The latest addition is the 1985 batch officer Ganesh Chandra Murmu, who was posted as the principal secretary to CM. While Murmu is poised to move to Delhi soon, the only big name of Modi’s team in the state administration is K Kailashnathan, the chief principal secretary to Chief Minister.

The key bureaucrat of the Modi era is serving a two-year post-retirement contract with the government of Gujarat. There is speculation among bureaucrats that he too would be given a plum position at the Centre after his contract expires in May. Over the last few months, hoardings have come up with Anandiben’s picture and gradually those with Narendra Modi’s are being replaced.

"She is also meeting party workers regularly to inquire about issues at the grass roots level," says a party functionary. That Anandiben wanted to control the levers of power in the state administrative mechanism was clear when in July last year, she transferred Vijay Nehra (2001 batch), one of the key IAS officials of the CMO, who enjoyed considerable confidence of the Modi to Rajkot as the municipal commissioner and replaced him with 1999 batch IAS Ajay Bhadoo. Bhadoo seems to have impressed Anandiben during his stint as collector of Mehsana and municipal commissioner of Rajkot.

Nehra, who was replaced, had a working relationship with Modi and Amit Shah and his sudden transfer has come as a surprise to many. Given the resistance to her leadership within the state BJP unit, the forthcoming civic body polls are being projected as the litmus test for her leadership