Ahmedabad (PTI): Five Gujarat ministers including the MLA from Morbi are among 38 sitting BJP members of the Assembly who have been denied ticket by the party for the upcoming state elections.
Minister of State for Labour and Employment Brijesh Merja, the legislator from Morbi where a bridge collapse incident last month claimed 135 lives, is among those dropped from the list of 160 candidates whose names were announced by the BJP on Thursday.
Gujarat Assembly Speaker Nimaben Acharya, who won from Bhuj seat of Kutch district in 2012 and 2017, has also been denied ticket this time by the party.
The BJP on Thursday released its first list of 160 candidates for the two-phase elections to the 182-member Gujarat Assembly to be held on December 1 and 5.
The party has fielded Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel from his constituency Ghatlodia and dropped a number of sitting MLAs.
From the present cabinet, the BJP has denied tickets to state Parliamentary and Legislative Affairs Minister Rajendra Trivedi, Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Pradip Parmar, MoS for Labour and Employment Brijesh Merja, MoS for Transport Arvind Raiyani and MoS for Social Justice and Empowerment RC Makwana.
Trivedi was stripped of the crucial revenue portfolio a few months back.
The 38 BJP MLAs who have been denied the ticket this time also include former CM Vijay Rupani and seven legislators who were part of his cabinet between 2017 and 2021 as ministers.
Rupani and his entire Council of Ministers were replaced by the BJP in September 2021.
A completely new cabinet was later formed under the leadership of CM Bhupendra Patel.
Those from the previous cabinet who have not been considered this time include ex-chief minister Rupani, former deputy CM Nitin Patel and former ministers RC Faldu, Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, Saurabh Patel, Kaushik Patel, Vasan Ahir and Dharmendrasinh Jadeja.
Rupani and Nitin Patel had on Wednesday night announced they will not fight the next month's Assembly elections.
Bhupendrasinh Chudasama and Pradeepsinh Jadeja -- who were ministers in the Rupani cabinet -- had also announced they will not seek tickets for the upcoming polls.
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Washington (AP): Kash Patel was sworn in as the FBI director and he called the opportunity to lead the nation's premier federal law enforcement agency the "greatest honour" of his life.
Patel was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday by a 51-49 margin, with two Republican lawmakers, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, breaking party ranks and voting against him.
"I think he'll go down as the best ever at that position," President Donald Trump told reporters Friday ahead of the White House swearing-in on Friday, which was conducted by Attorney General Pam Bondi and attended by Republican supporters in Congress, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.
Trump added that the "agents love this guy".
Patel will inherit an FBI gripped by turmoil as the Justice Department over the past month has forced out a group of senior bureau officials and made a highly unusual demand for the names of thousands of agents who participated in investigations related to the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol.
Democrats had sounded the alarm about the appointment, saying they fear Patel will operate as a loyalist for Trump and abuse the FBI's law enforcement powers to go after the president's adversaries. They've cited past comments such as his suggestion before he was nominated that he would "come after" anti-Trump "conspirators" in the government and media.
Patel sought to assuage those concerns at his confirmation hearing last month, saying he intended to follow the Constitution and had no interest in pursuing retribution, though he also said at his swearing-in Friday that reporters had written "fake, malicious, slanderous and defamatory" stories about him.
Republicans angry over what they see as law enforcement bias against conservatives during the Democratic Biden administration, as well as criminal investigations into Trump, have rallied behind Patel as the right person for the job.
Patel has spoken of his desire to implement major changes at the FBI, including a reduced footprint in Washington and a renewed emphasis on the bureau's traditional crime-fighting duties rather than the intelligence-gathering work that has come to define its mandate over the past two decades as national security threats have proliferated.
He said Friday that the FBI's "national security mission" was equally as important as its efforts to fight violent crime and drug overdoses.
"Anyone that wishes to do harm to our way of life and our citizens, here and abroad, will face the full wrath of the DOJ and FBI," Patel said. "If you seek to hide in any corner of this country or planet, we will put on the world's largest manhunt and we will find you and we will decide your end-state."
A former Justice Department counterterrorism prosecutor, Patel was selected in November to replace Christopher Wray, who was picked by Trump in 2017 and who resigned at the conclusion of the Biden administration to make way for his chosen successor.
Wray infuriated Trump throughout his tenure, including after FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in August 2022 for classified documents in one of two federal investigations that resulted in indictments against Trump that were dismissed after his election win.
FBI directors are given 10-year terms as a way to insulate them from political influence and keep them from becoming beholden to a particular president or administration. But Trump fired the FBI director he inherited, James Comey, after Comey had spent over three years on the job and replaced Wray after more than seven years in the position.