The BJP on Monday appointed Chandrakant Raghunath Patil, MP from Navsari in south Gujarat, as party president in Gujarat.
Patil, 65, succeeds Jitendrabhai Vaghani, whose term as Gujarat BJP president ended last December.
Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani welcomed Patil's appointment.
Though nobody within the saffron party has said it on record, Patil is a surprise choice. Though Patil is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's choice to coordinate development works in his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi, he was not expected to be elevated to the post of state party president.
This is the first time the BJP has appointed a non-Gujarati as the state party president. Patil was a policeman before turning into a full-time politician and businessman.
A three-time MP, Patil won his seat for the last two terms by more than five lakh votes—one of the biggest margins in Gujarat. He has never been a minister, though. He has been with the BJP for four decades. A hardworking person, he is considered a hard taskmaster, too.
Born in Jalgaon, Maharastra, Patil, who studied in ITI, has a strong hold over south Gujarat, where the BJP has been making electoral gains with every passing year.
Patil has remained loyal to the party and has friends within the party in all camps and in opposition Congress, too.
When Modi was out of Gujarat in 1990s, Patil was one of the few in the BJP who had remained in touch with him.