First term (2001–02)
On 7 October 2001, Modi was administered the oath of office by the Sunder Singh Bhandari, Governor of Gujarat .[60] He then contested election from Rajkot - II assembly constituency in a by-poll and won by defeating Congress's Ashwin Mehta by 14,728 votes.[61]
2002 Gujarat riots
On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers including large numbers of Hindu pilgrims was burned near Godhra, killing around 60 people.[a] Following rumours that the fire was carried out by Muslim arsonists, anti-Muslim violence spread throughout Gujarat.[64] Estimates of the death toll ranged from 900 to over 2,000, while several thousand more people were injured.[65][66] The Modi government imposed a curfew in major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders, and called for the army to prevent the violence from escalating.[67][68] However, human rights organisations, opposition parties, and sections of the media all accused Gujarat's government of taking insufficient action against the riots, and even condoning it in some cases.[67][68][69] Modi's decision to move the corpses of the Kar Sevaks who had been burned to death in Godhra to Ahmedabad had been criticised for inflaming the violence.[70][71]
Modi's involvement in the events of 2002 has continued to be debated. Several scholars have described the events of 2002 as a pogrom, while others have called it an instance of state terrorism.[79][80][81] Summarizing academic views on the subject, Martha Nussbaum stated that "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law."[82] In 2012, Maya Kodnani, a former minister in Modi's Government from 2007–09, was convicted of having participated in the Naroda Patiya massacre during the 2002 riots.[83][84] She was both the first female and the first MLA to be convicted in a post-Godhra riots case.[85] While initially announcing that it would seek the death penalty for Kodnani, Modi's government eventually pardoned her in 2013 and settled for a prison sentence.[86][87][88]
A few months after the riots, New York Times reporter Celia Dugger asked Modi if he wished he handled the riots any differently. He told her his only regret was that he did not handle the news media better[89][90] and cited India's NDTV channel as being irresponsible in its reporting.[91]
2002 election
Second term (2002–07)
Despite allegations of using anti-Muslim rhetoric during the campaign, Modi's emphasis shifted during his second term from Hindutva to the economic development of Gujarat.[55][98] Modi's decisions curtailed the influence of organisations of the Sangh Parivar such as the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP),[104]which had become entrenched in Gujarat after the decline of Ahmedabad's textile industry.[55] Modi dropped Gordhan Zadafia, an ally of his former Sangh co–worker and VHP state chief Praveen Togadia, from the cabinet ministry. When the BKS launched a farmers' agitation, Modi ordered their eviction from houses provided by the state government. Modi's decision to demolish 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar deepened the rift with VHP.[104][105] Various organisations of the Sangh were no longer consulted nor informed of Modi's administrative decisions prior to their enactment.[104]
The changes brought by Modi in the period 2002–07 has led to Gujarat being called an attractive investment destination. Aditi Phadnis writes that "there was sufficient anecdotal evidence pointing to the fact that corruption had gone down significantly in the state... if there was to be any corruption, Modi had to know about it".[55] Modi started financial and technology parks in the state. During the 2007 Vibrant Gujarat summit, real estate investment deals worth 
6.6 trillion were signed in Gujarat.[55]
Despite his focus on economic issues during the second term, Modi continued to be criticised for his relationship with Muslims. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then Prime Minister of India, who had asked Modi not to discriminate between citizens in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence and had pushed for his resignation as Chief Minister of Gujarat,[106][107]distanced himself from Modi and reached out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 elections to the Lok Sabha. After the elections, Vajpayee held that the violence in Gujarat had been one of the reasons for BJP's electoral defeat and acknowledged that not removing Modi immediately after the Gujarat violence was a mistake.[108][109]
2007 election
In the run up to the assembly elections in 2007 and the general election in 2009, the BJP stepped up its rhetoric on terrorism.[110] On 18 July 2006, Modi criticised the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, "... for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislations" such as the Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act. He asked the national government to allow states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the 2006 blasts in Mumbai.[111] Around this time Modi frequently demanded the execution of Afzal Guru,[112] a collaborator of the Pakistani jihadists who had been convicted of terrorism for his involvement in the 2001 Indian Parliament attack.[113][b] As a consequence of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Modi held a meeting to discuss security of Gujarat's 1,600 km (990 mi) long coastline which resulted in the central government authorisation of 30 high–speed surveillance boats.[114]
In July 2007, Modi completed 2,063 consecutive days as chief minister of Gujarat, making him the longest-serving holder of that post.[115] The BJP won 122 of the 182 seats in the state assembly in the 2007 election, and Modi continued as chief minister.[116]
Third term (2007–12)
Development projects
Successive BJP governments under Patel and Modi supported NGOs and communities in the creation of infrastructure projects for conservation of groundwater. Gujarat is a semi-arid state and, according to Tushaar Shah, was "... never known for agrarian dynamism". By December 2008, 500,000 structures had been constructed, of which 113,738 were check dams. While most check dams remained empty during the pre-monsoon season, they helped recharge the aquifers that lie beneath them.[117] 60 of the 112 tehsils which were found to have over–exploited the groundwater table in 2004 had regained their normal groundwater level by 2010,[118] meaning that Gujarat had managed to increase its groundwater levels at a time when they were falling in all other Indian states. As a result, production of genetically-modified Bt cotton, which could now be irrigated using tube wells, increased to become the largest in India.[117] The boom in cotton production and utilisation of semi–arid land[119] saw the agriculture growth rate of Gujarat increase to 9.6% in the period 2001–07.[120] Though public irrigation measures in the central and southern areas, such as the Sardar Sarovar Project, have not been as successful in achieving their aims,[117] for the decade 2001–10, Gujarat recorded an agricultural growth rate of 10.97%, the highest among all Indian states.[119] However, sociologists have pointed out that the growth rate under the Congress government during 1992–97 was at 12.9%.[121]
The Narendra Modi government also succeeded in bringing electricity to every village in Gujarat, although Dipankar Banerjee points out that all but 170 of them had been electrified under the previous Congress administration.[121] Modi also greatly changed the system of power distribution in the state, with a significant impact on farmers. The state greatly expanded the Jyotigram Yojana scheme, in which the agricultural electricity supply was rewired to separate it from other rural power supplies. The electricity supplied was then rationed to fit scheduled demand for irrigation, resulting in a cost reduction. Initial farmer protests died down when the farmers who benefited found that supply had become more regular.[117] An assessment study found that corporations and large farmers had significantly benefited from the policy, but that small farmers and labourers had been negatively impacted.[122]
In his third term, progress was made on the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City project, considered as one of Modi's pet projects. The first phase, which encompassed two skyscrapers, GIFT One and Two, was completed in 2012.[12
3][124]
3][124]
Debate on Gujarat's development under Modi
Modi's government has worked to brand Gujarat as a state of dynamic development, economic growth and prosperity, using the slogan "Vibrant Gujarat".[125][126][127] However, critics have pointed to Gujarat's relatively poor record on human development, poverty alleviation, nutrition, and education. The state is 13th in India for poverty, 21st for education, 44.7 percent of children under five are underweight and 23 percent are undernourished putting the state in the "alarming" category on the India State Hunger Index.[128] In contrast, officials from the state of Gujarat claim that Gujarat outperformed India as a whole in the rates of improvement of multiple human indicators, such as female education, between 2001 and 2011. Furthermore, they claim that the school drop-out rates declined from 20 percent in 2001 to 2 percent in 2011, and that maternal mortality declined by 32 percent from 2001 to 2011.[129] Additionally, the Indian Supreme Court, in a review of theLand Acquisition Act, 1894, identified Gujarat as being one of the few states from which there were no complaints of forcible land acquisition.[130]
Political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot asserts that the development in Gujarat has been limited to the urban middle class, while rural dwellers and lower castes have become increasingly marginalised. He cites the fact that Gujarat ranks 10th among the 21 Indian states in the Human Development Index, which he attributes to the lower development in rural Gujarat. He states that under Modi, the number of families living below the poverty line has increased, and that particularly rural adivasi and dalits have become increasingly marginalised.[131] In July 2013, Economics Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen criticised Narendra Modi's governance record and said he did not approve of it, saying that under Modi's administration, Gujarat's "record in education and healthcare is pretty bad".[132] However, economists Arvind Panagariya and Jagdish Bhagwati state that Gujarat's social indicator improved from a much lower baseline than other Indian states. They state that Gujarat's performance in raising literacy rates has been superior to other states in India, and the "rapid" improvement of health indicators in Gujarat as evidence that "its progress has not been poor by any means."[133]
Fourth term (2012–14)
In the 2012 Gujarat legislative assembly elections, Modi won from the constituency of Maninagar with a majority of 86,373 votes over Sanjiv Bhatt's wife, Shweta, who was contesting for the Indian National Congress.[134] The BJP won 115 of the 182 seats, continuing the majority that the party has had throughout Modi's tenure,[135] and allowing the party to form the government, as it has in Gujarat since 1995.[136]
In later by-elections, the BJP won an additional four assembly seats and 2 Lok Sabha seats that were all held by the Indian National Congress prior to the by-elections, even though Modi never campaigned for its candidates.[137] This brought the number of seats held by the BJP in the state assembly up to 119.
In 2013, the Wharton India Economic Forum (WIEF) at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania cancelled a keynote video-conference speech by Modi after some Indian-Americans lobbied against Modi.[138]
After being elected as Prime Minister, Modi resigned from the post of chief minister on 21 May 2014, and his MLA seat from theManinagar constituency, after delivering a leaving speech described as emotional. Anandiben Patel was chosen as his replacement.[139]
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