It is Narendra Modi again..... Chidambaram says otherwise

  

He is one man who is consistently shunned, abhorred by media ~ still winning.  Exit polls and post-election surveys have a notorious record of inexactitude in India, so it’s perilous to take their findings as final. Yet, when there is such a unanimity in the findings of virtually every survey and exit poll – it represents only one thing

That Narendra Modi is all set to return to power for the record 3^rd time at Gujarat.  Firstpost reports that : there’s a wild West Wind blowing in from Gujarat, and its name is Narendra Modi.

The Finance Minister has come out with a statement that the BJP may form a government in Gujarat but “the real winner” in the state is the Congress; , according to Chidambaram the BJP’s appeal had shrunk in the state.

At Gujarat, the high-decibel dholaks are out in force, the rumble of firecrackers rents the air, and BJP leaders in Gujarat and elsewhere are in a celebratory mood. With good reason. Narendra Modi has convincingly won a third round of Assembly elections in Gujarat under his leadership, defeating not just the Congress and the GPP, but even sections of the VHP and the RSS and – as BJP leaders would claim – the editorial biases of the liberal media that treated the 2002 riots as the beginning of history.

In a day and age when parties and governments make a hash of governance even after just one term in office and go to elections with the baggage of incumbency, Modi has, with his hat-trick of victories, effectively defeated the anti-incumbency sentiment as well. And, in large measure, he did it in Gujarat with the sheer force of his own personality and his record in office over the past 10 years. And the fact that in his campaign, he eschewed the politics of identity, and framed the contest in the context of an upwardly mobile neo-middle class has some important takeaways.

The  emphatic a victory seems less than stirring to impartial observers, it is only because of the excessively heightened expectations in the final phase of the campaign — built up by Modi’s army of loyal supporters — that the BJP was all set to score in excess of 130 (and perhaps even 150) seats. In fact, the case had been made that since this was not really a contest about Gujarat, Modi was in effect contesting against himself – and was looking to raise the bar with a thunderous, record-smashing victory to establish himself as the BJP’s unchallenged leader in the race for a prime ministerial candidate.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

With inputs taken from www.firstpost.com