PM Narendra Modi completes 22 years in electoral life, heads home to Rajkot

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, February 24

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday completed 22 years in electoral life with plans for a grand homecoming to Rajkot on Sunday. Rajkot, the industrial city in southwestern part of Gujarat, had first made Modi an MLA.

It was on February 24, 2002, that Modi won his maiden Assembly election from the Rajkot II constituency.

Only four months prior to the filing of nominations for that historic bypoll, which put him on the course that led to Prime Minister’s residence 7, Lok Kalyan Marg, New Delhi, Modi had assumed charge as the Gujarat Chief Minister.

His entry into the Gujarat Government was not through popular vote but was triggered by flailing health and mounting challenges of then CM Keshubhai Patel, who was losing grip over affairs after the Kutch earthquake of 2001.

To seek legitimacy for his chief ministership, Modi contested the Assembly bypoll from Rajkot II and won by nearly 15,000 votes.

The 73-year-old, who was Gujarat CM from 2001 to 2014 and PM from 2014 until today, will be back in Rajkot on Sunday to dedicate to the nation five new AIIMS-like institutions, including AIIMS Rajkot.

“Rajkot will always have a very special place in my heart. It was the people of this city who put their faith in me, giving me my first-ever electoral win. Since then, I have always worked to do justice to the aspirations of the ‘janta janardan’. It’s also a happy coincidence that I will be in Gujarat today and tomorrow, and one of the programmes is being held in Rajkot, from where five AIIMS will be dedicated to the nation,” Modi said on Saturday.

The February 24, 2002, archives feature a public gathering Narendra Modi addressed in Rajkot, thanking people for electing him and “putting him through ‘agni pareeksha’”.

Days after Modi took oath as MLA, Godhra train burning occurred on the morning of February 27, 2002, inciting the worst-ever communal riots in Gujarat and charting a chequered path for Modi whom the Supreme Court in 2022 gave a clean chit in the matter.

The court concluded that the Gujarat riots were spontaneous and not pre-planned as alleged by petitioner Zakia Jafri, wife of Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who was killed in the carnage.

Until his maiden poll win from Rajkot, Modi had been in the backdrop managing and mobilising BJP cadres across elections. He was credited with many slogans and electoral strategies that helped the BJP change the course of national politics in the 1990s.

Special place

Rajkot will always have a very special place in my heart. It was the people of this city who put their faith in me, giving me my first-ever electoral win. — Narendra Modi, PM