THE SAFFRON TSUNAMI

THE BJP’S BIGGEST VICTORY YET IN GUJARAT SHOWS THE MODI MAGIC AT ITS PEAK. A WITHERING CONGRESS AND A RISING AAP COMPLETE THE PICTURE

- JUMANA SHAH

Bhupendra will break Narendra’s record,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi would declare at every election rally in Gujarat over the past month, accurately predicting how incumbent chief minister Bhupendra Patel, an innocuous political presence otherwise, was in line for having his name inscribed in history—just by being there at the right time. Already by mid-morning on December 8, the prophesy was coming true as the BJP leads crossed the 130-seat mark. (Modi had crafted the party’s previous high, 127 seats, in the 2002 assembly election.) But even that started looking distinctly bantamweight as the day hemmed in on never-before levels. Finally, 156 seats in a 182-member House. A seemingly untouchable record—the 149 seats Madhavsinh Solanki had amassed for the Congress back in 1985 with his KHAM formula—lay broken. No wonder the garba celebrations at the BJP office in Ahmedabad rivalled the marriage season revelry on city roads. This too was a marriage of another sort, between what an overwhelmed PM called the “tireless karyakarta” and jan shakti, between party and people. With Modi himself as its high priest. For his party, both its message and its medium.