At 6.10pm on Friday, India’s prime minister designate Narendra Modi took centrestage — in Vadodara, one of the two Lok Sabha seats he won on the way to decimating the Congress and everybody else to wrest power.
“People wanted me to say something, but my wish was if I had to say something I would say it in Vadodara,” he told a lustily cheering crowd in Gujarat city 139 km from state capital Gandhinagar.
“How do you feel, tell me,” he posed to the crowd before engaging them in his by now known style of oratory. He used the ‘Ache din ane wale hain’ (Good days are coming) catchphrase to great effect in his first address after the sweeping win.
Modi said “Achey din” and the crowd completed “aane wale hain”. This played out twice.
Modi, who won by more than 570,000 votes from Vadodara, apart from winning Varanasi, said, “I bow down before the people of Vadodara. After filing my nomination papers from here, I could not give this constituency even 50 minutes. But paanch lakh sattar hazaar (5.7 lakh)!”
He added, “In Vadodara, ever voter worked as Narendra Modi.”
Raking up the Varanasi administration’s reported denial of permission for his rally in the holy city, he said, “I could not take my words as a candidate to Varanasi voters, but they voted for my silence.”
