Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his one-time mentor Shankarsinh Vaghela, currently leader of the Opposition in the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha, share some things in common: both are pre-planners and indefatigable, high-profile and colourful, orators and great event managers, and know how to generate news.

If Modi’s just-concluded two-day visit to Gujarat demonstrated that he raised issues more as a state leader than as the PM, Vaghela’s googly left the Congress Party awe-struck: as many as 36 Congress legislators out of a total of 57, on Monday, urged the party high command to make Vaghela the Chief Ministerial candidate for the coming Assembly elections, due by December 2017.

This, when Vaghela himself had announced “withdrawal” from the CM’s race on March 20 in the presence of AICC General Secretary in-charge Gurudas Kamat and others. On March 30, BJP President Amit Shah and CM Vijay Rupani met him in his Vidhan Sabha office.

Meanwhile, Vaghela’s supporters were already running a sponsored campaign on Facebook complete with his photographs and videos: “#Bapu For Gujarat CM: Gujarat Needs Shankarsinh Vaghela, Simhasan Khali Karo, Gujarat Ka Sher Aa Raha Hai. He even told reporters on the Hindu New Year’s Day that he would meet them in the “CM’s Chambers” on Gudi Padwa next year!

On Monday, while Modi was engaged in a whirlwind tour of Gujarat, Vaghela sprung another surprise. Reports here suggested that, in the absence of Gujarat Congress chief Bharatsinh Solanki, and the presence of Kamat, the Congress MLAs and other leaders met at Vaghela’s Gandhinagar residence. Around 36 legislators urged the party leadership to make Vaghela the Congress Party’s Chief Ministerial candidate for the coming polls. On their part, some Solanki supporters met separately. Party sources said Vaghela was trying to extract the best deal in both the Congress and the BJP.

While the Congress Party is facing intense factionalism, the ruling BJP appears comfortably placed now as the multiple agitations — successively launched by the Patidars, the OBCs, the SC-STs, and the Dalits on overlapping issues — seem to have lost steam. The PM and BJP chief Amit Shah have been touring the state, almost on a fortnightly basis, alternately, to tie up loose ends in poll strategy in a bid to reach the target of winning at least 150 Vidhan Sabha seats out of 182 set by Modi. Earlier, the Congress had won 149 seats under the leadership of then CM Madhavsinh Solanki in 1985.

Modi’s latest visit is aimed at reclaiming the powerful Patidar community which has been the backbone of the BJP in the saffron state since 1995. He participated in two Patidar-led high-profile events in Surat and described the community as his family. Besides, he also targeted voters among women, youth, diamond workers, farmers, milk unions and tribals, among others, whom he tried to woo in his speeches. His mega road-show in Surat was a show of strength for the BJP in Gujarat.

Interestingly, while a section of Congress MLAs is trying to project Vaghela as the party’s CM candidate, the BJP is sitting pretty. As in UP and other states, Modi himself seems to be the party’s face in the next Assembly polls and is unlikely to project any BJP leader as the CM candidate, as he did in UP and other states in the March elections.

It was, perhaps, with this aim that he turned ‘Santa Claus’ on Monday -- showering gifts of various schemes even as CM Vijay Rupani, his Deputy Nitin Patel and former CM Anandiben Patel looked on silently.

Modi also generated news when he stopped his cavalcade to receive a three-year-old girl, Nancy, who had run towards him from amid the crowd lined up on a road. At a hospital, he pulled the ears of a boy and at a function in Silvassa, he helped a differently-abled youth pull a tricycle gifted by the PM till the end of the podium.

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