JOIN USA year which saw him being put under pressure by his opponents on numerous occasions. Each time he seemed to have turned adversity into his advantage. Modi has mastered the art of wriggling out of tough situations and being in the news and 2010 was no exception.
The year started on a bad note with Modi having to bear the ignominy of appearing before a special investigation team for questioning in connection with the riot cases. For almost nine hours Modi was questioned by former CBI chief R K Raghavan-led SIT amidst clamour by the Opposition that he should resign.
And as his government was coming to terms with the SIT investigations, another shocker came in April when his most trusted aide and former minister of state for home, Amit Shah was arrested by the CBI for his alleged involvement in the fake encounter of Sohrabudin Shiekh. Shah’s arrest and subsequent investigations threatened to engulf Modi in a severe political crisis with the CBI toying with the idea of questioning Modi.
But just when it seemed that Modi was down and out, he hit back and delivered a hard political punch to his opponents. He spearheaded the BJPs campaign in the municipal elections to six bodies carefully picking the candidates all by himself. There were murmurs of protests within the party but in the end, Modi was spot on. Realising that the anti-incumbency factor might work against his party which was already ruling the six municipal corporations in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Bhavangar, Rajkot, Surat and Jamnagar Modi decided to bring in some new faces. The right mix of youth and experience worked for him and as a result, the BJP won all the six municipal corporations, reducing the Congress to single digit representation in some of them.
And the victory run did not stop here. Next on course were the panchayat elections and his critics ruled that this was the real test since Modi’s earlier victory was seen as urban centric. Some even doubted if he could succeed in the rural areas. But yet again, Modi proved his detractors wrong and the BJP swept thr polls.
These victories yet again bolstered his supporters within the BJP who started believing that Modi could well now rise to the national level and assume a more crucial role in the central leadership. But given his knack of hitting back at the right time, it remains to be seen how Modi works on the political gains in Gujarat in 2010.