Modi\'s Magic Number

Ajit Solanki/Associated PressSupporters of Bharatiya Janata Party wearing masks of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in Amhedabad, Gujarat on Thursday.

That Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, is close to winning state elections Thursday does not come as much of a surprise. The Congress Party's campaign has been badly out-flanked by Mr. Modi and his supporters, earning derision even from its own voters.

However, the number of seats that his Bharatiya Janata Party wins in the state is b eing closely watched. That figure could send a strong signal about Mr. Modi's prospects for the 2014 national election, when he is widely expected to run for prime minister. In 2007, when memories of the 2002 riots in Godhra, Gujarat were fresher, Mr. Modi won 117 seats. As Somini Sengupta wrote in The New York Times at the time:

His victory, by a wide margin, was a stunning defeat for the country's governing Congress Party and signaled that Mr. Modi and his charismatic, often pugnacious, brand of Hindu supremacist politics would be a force to be reckoned with in the future.

That Mr. Modi is a “force to be reckoned with” is now taken for granted. But just how much of a force, at least on the national stage, remains to be seen. If Mr. Modi wins more than 117 seats in Gujarat, where the Congress Party h as campaigned heavily, even bringing out figurehead and party president Sonia Gandhi, expect his victory to be viewed by his party as a mandate for national rule.

If he wins fewer than 117, more than a decade after the riots, when the state has attracted huge investment from foreign and domestic companies and after a multimillion dollar campaign, Mr. Modi's “victory” will questioned by not only the opposition Congress Party. In fact, the questions have already begun:

“If the B.J.P. does not cross 117 and the Congress has improved its tally, Congress is the clear winner in Gujarat too,” P. Chidambaram, the finance minister, said in a televised interview.

Winning less than 117 seats could also prompt discussion in Mr. Modi's own party, whose members have quietly expressed reservations about whether he could be a national leader.

How do you think the number of seats Mr. Modi wins should be interpreted? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. < /p>