2014 Indian general election campaign

2014 Indian general election campaign 

On 31 March 2013 Modi was appointed to the BJP parliamentary board, the highest decision-making body in the party, and at the party's 9 June national executive meeting he was appointed chair of the BJP's central election campaign committee for the 2014 general election. Senior leader and founding member Lal Krishna Advani resigned his party posts after the appointment in protest of leaders who were "concerned with their personal agendas". His resignation, which was described by The Times of India as "a protest against Narendra Modi's elevation as the chairman of the party's election committee", was withdrawn the following day at the urging of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. In September 2013, the BJP announced that the chief minister would be their candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

Modi was a candidate in two constituencies: Varanasi and Vadodara. During the campaign, he pledged to speed up government decision-making and remove bureaucratic hurdles which slowed development. He won in both constituencies, defeating Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the INC in Vadodara by 570,128 votes.The BJP-led NDA won the general election overall and the INC experienced its worst-ever defeat. Modi, who was unanimously elected leader of the BJP after his party's victory, was appointed prime minister by India's president.To comply with the law that an MP cannot represent more than one constituency, he vacated the Vadodara seat.[188] In what CNN described as "India's first social media election", Modi used Twitter, Facebook, Google Hangouts and holographic projections for campaign appearances. His victory tweet was the most re-tweeted tweet in India.

Prime Minister (2014–present)

Further information: Swearing-in ceremony of Narendra Modi

Modi reading from a paper into a bank of microphones

Modi (far right) being sworn in as Prime Minister, in the presence of President Pranab Mukherjee (far left), 2014.

Modi was sworn in as Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014 at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. He became the first Prime Minister born after India's independence from the United Kingdom. He was the first to invite all South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation leaders to attend his swearing-in ceremony. His first cabinet consisted of 45 ministers, 25 fewer than the previous UPA government. He started a monthly radio program titled "Mann ki Baat" on 3 October 2014. He repealed 1,159 obsolete laws in first two years as compared to 1,301 such laws repealed by his preceding governments over a span of 64 years. As of May 2016, more than 1.04 crore people have been trained under Skill India Mission launched by him in 2015.