Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his one-time mentor Shankarsinh Vaghela, currently Leader of the Opposition in Gujarat, have several things in common: both are meticulous planners and indefatigable, high-profile and colourful, orators and great event managers, and know how to generate news.

If Modi came across as more of a State leader during his just-concluded two-day visit to Gujarat, Vaghela’s googly left the Congress fumbling: 36 of the party’s 57 MLAs have urged the high-command to make him the chief ministerial candidate for the Assembly elections due this year.

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

Meanwhile, Vaghela’s supporters were already running a sponsored campaign on Facebook, replete with his photographs and videos. The hashtags and slogans read ‘Bapu For Gujarat CM: Gujarat Needs Shankarsinh Vaghela’, ‘ Simhasan khali karo, Gujarat ka sher aa raha hai ’ (step aside for the lion of Gujarat).

He even told reporters on the Hindu New Year that he would meet them in the “CM’s Chambers” on next year’s Gudi Padwa !

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

Sitting pretty While the Congress is facing intense factionalism, the ruling BJP appears comfortably placed now as the multiple agitations — successively launched by the Patidars, the OBCs, and the Dalits on overlapping issues — seem to have lost steam.

Modi and Shah have been frequently touring the State, almost fortnightly, to tie up loose ends in poll strategy in a bid to reach their target of at least 150 of the 182 Vidhan Sabha seats. No party has ever crossed the 150-mark in Gujarat with the closest being 149 in 1985, when Bharatsinh’s father, Madhavsinh Solanki, led the Congress to a massive victory.

Modi’s latest visit is aimed at wooing the powerful Patidar community, which has been the BJP’s biggest support base since 1995. The PM participated in two Patidar-led high-profile events in Surat and described the community as his family. Besides, he also targeted voters among women, youths, diamond workers, farmers, milk unions and tribals among others. His mega roadshow in Surat was a show of strength of the BJP in the State.

As In UP and other States, Modi himself seems to be the party’s face in the next Assembly polls, and the BJP is unlikely to project any leader as the CM candidate.

It was, perhaps, with this aim that he turned ‘Santa Claus’ on Monday, showering gifts of various schemes even as Chief Minister 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 Gondaliya, who had run towards him from amid the crowd lined up on a road. At a hospital, he pulled ears of a boy and at a function in Silvassa, he helped a differently-abled youth pull a tricycle till the end of the podium.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW