NEW DELHI, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's sixth consecutive government, headed by 61-year-old Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, was sworn in on Tuesday in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat.
BJP won the recently held assembly elections in the western state where Modi had been the chief minister from 2001 till 2014 when he became the prime minister after the party swept to power in the general elections decimating the Congress party.
Rupani and some one-and-a-half dozen other ministers were administered the oath of office by Gujarat Governor O.P. Kohli at a grand ceremony in state capital Gandhinagar, attended by Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, BJP chief Amit Shah and chief ministers of BJP-ruled states.
This is Rupani's second stint as Chief Minister of Gujarat. Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel was also sworn in for the second time. Patel's continuance as Rupani's deputy indicates that the influential Patidar community will be well represented in the new Gujarat government.
Earlier this morning, Modi's convoy made its way from the Ahmedabad airport, where he flew in from the national capital, to an open ground near the state secretariat where the oath ceremony took place.
Modi's BJP bagged 99 seats in the 182-member Gujarat assembly, barely seven more than the majority mark needed to form a government and 16 less than it had won last time. The country's and the state's main opposition Congress party did quite well, securing nearly 80 seats.
Winning Gujarat for the sixth time in a row was crucial for the BJP as it showed people of the state, mostly traders, gave a thumbs-up to Modi's two key economic reforms -- scrapping of higher denomination currency notes and introduction of a unified tax regime.
The general elections are due in 2019 and Gujarat gave BJP the much-needed boost it needed at the right time.
