MODI8217;S ELEVEN

Manish Bardia
Graphic designer behind the Modi-mask
He is the man behind the mask. Bardia, a designer with an Ahmedabad production house, not only created the Modi-mask that came to symbolise the BJP campaign in Gujarat, he also designed the Jeetega Gujarat website for the elections.
Having filmed Modi for the last five years, Bardia, 39, has loaded 244 Modi videos8212;clips of his speeches8212;on YouTube, has clicked over 1,500 pictures of Modi that don websites, hoardings, pamphlets and other propaganda material.
When Gujarat8217;s bureaucrats want to flaunt the achievements of the Modi government, they are likely to just plug into his short films as aid.

Amit shah
Minister of State Home
Minister of State Home Amit Shah, 43, is the first among equals in what is labelled as Modi8217;s kitchen cabinet. Along with Saurabh Patel and I K Jadeja, he leads the BJP8217;s decibel war inside the Assembly. He spent some anxious moments this year when the controversy raged over the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter, but Modi stood rock like behind his ideological ally.
The relationship goes back to the days when the BJP was still in the making in Gujarat. 8216;8216;If there is one person in the cabinet who can call a spade a spade in the presence of Narendrabhai, it is Amit Shah,8217;8217; says a cabinet colleague.
The burly minister with high stakes in cooperatives and stocks nurses high ambitions. But this is one BJP leader Modi does not mind indulging.

I.k. jadeja
Minister of Urban Development
Minister Urban Development I.K. Jadeja, 49, is a staunch Modi loyalist, a Modi-bhakta as the Congress leaders like to call him.
Coming from the small principality of Dhrangadhra in Surendranagar district, Modi uses Jadeja as a sounding board among his cabinet colleagues, as also to trouble shoot in emergencies like the Surat floods of 2006. Among media persons, Jadeja is known for defending the Modi Government with lengthy rejoinders as the Cabinet8217;s chief spokesperson.

Saurabh Patel
Minister of State Finance, Energy, Planning
Minister of State Finance, Energy, and Planning Saurabh Patel, 49, is the suave, reformist face of the Modi cabinet. An MBA from the United States, he thinks in English, and is comfortable with briefings that have complex pie charts and statistics. Likes to go for a swim if he gets time. Be it the much talked about Jyoti Gram8212;the 24-hour three-phase power in rural homes8212;or Gujarat becoming a revenue surplus state, much of Modi8217;s development song has had a Saurabh Patel background score.
On his campaign trail in Botad, the minister faced angry farmers complaining of raids on them. Patel shrugged it off as proof of his neutrality. He8217;s also Modi8217;s link with many corporate houses in the State. Modi shielded him strongly through the agitation led by the Sangh8212;affiliated farmers body, the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh BKS.
Whether the CM has been able to save his protege from his electorate8217;s ire remains to be seen.

Parindu Bhagat
Convener, election cell, Gujarat BJP
Also known as Kakubhai, Bhagat, in his early 50s, is pretty much Modi8217;s Man Friday. When Modi went to file his nomination papers from Maninagar this election, Kakubhai was seen sitting to his right while state BJP chief Purushottam Rupala was on Modi8217;s left.
This visible closeness goes back to mid-1970, when Modi, the RSS pracharak, lived in Bhagat8217;s home. Kakubhai8217;s father, Kanaiyalal Bhagat, was a much-respected RSS Sanghchalak or state head, and would regularly host Modi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani. Apart from overseeing Modi8217;s campaign and advertising, he also liaises for him outside Gujarat. If Surendra Patel, or Kaka, is the fundraiser, Kaku is the fund manager for Modi. He is also a crucial link between Arun Jaitley and Modi. Bhagat8217;s son is married to a niece of Jaitley8217;s wife.

Omprakash Singh Chandel
PA to Modi
OP to all, this diminutive PA to Modi understands instructions without his boss having to say anything. He looks after non-BJP contacts of Modi, mostly of people outside Gujarat.
Belonging to an RSS family in Banda district of western Uttar Pradesh, OP met Modi at the BJP headquarters while the latter was cooling his heels as party8217;s general secretary in Delhi. Having done his secretarial training, OP was a temporary PA then. Now the 28-year-old travels with the boss to Delhi, keeps the appointments diary, and is known to speak with a disarming softness. The Gujarat Government8217;s official diary shows his home in the CM8217;s bungalow.

Sushil Pandit
Media campaign designer who gave the BJP the Jeetega Gujarat slogan
Team Modi is incomplete without this Kashmiri Pandit. Just when it looked like the Gujarat Congress had stolen a march with its youthful Chak De slogan, riding on the popularity of the hit film, the BJP hit back with Jeetega Gujarat conceptualised by this Delhi-based advertising professional.
He turned entrepreneur 10 years ago8212;his company, The Hive, designs election campaigns. Pandit was first roped in by L K Advani through V P Goel in 1998 for the BJP8217;s 8216;Moment of Truth8217; campaign. In 1999, when the two Aruns8212;Jaitley and Shourie8212;led the 8216;Tried, Tested, and Trusted8217; Atal Bihari Vajpayee campaign post-Kargil, Pandit was the man behind the slogans. The only time that he wasn8217;t part of the BJP campaign team was during the 2004 India Shining campaign8212;and the NDA lost. Pandit was busy assisting a struggling Chandrika Kumaratunga fight elections in Sri Lanka that year. Travelling with Jaitley since, Pandit, 44, also lent his creative punch lines to the eminently successful BJP campaigns in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and Bihar. Be it the Shriman Bantadhar against Digvijay Singh8217;s rule, 15 Saal, Bura Haal in February 2005 in Bihar, or the Naya Bihar, Nitish Kumar slogan of December 2005 when Bihar went to polls again, they all had the Pandit imprint. For the Gujarat campaign, preparations began in April itself with Pandit camping in the state off and on. 8216;8216;The idea was to soak in the issues, to understand what the Gujarat election would be all about. Even to understand from Narendrabhai himself on how he saw it evolving,8217;8217; he says.
Pandit was convinced a repeat of 8216;India Shining8217; would not work. 8216;8216;The crux of the whole exercise was that Gujarat was on the move, making giant strides. Yet, it was premature to say that Gujarat had delivered. With the kind of benchmarks the CM had set, it was still in the making. In that context this election was a watershed. If the work got interrupted it would be a setback. So the campaign was woven around this theme: For Gujarat to win, Narendrabhai needs to win. So, Jeetega Gujarat.8217;8217;

Dinesh Thakur
PA to Modi
Born and brought up in Delhi, this 32-year-year Thakur from Uttarakhand completes the trio who shadow Modi. He is computer savvy and handles Modi8217;s correspondence and emails. Insiders say once someone told Modi of a jehadi website but couldn8217;t provide its address. Thakur hunted it out in a jiffy. His tech skills have gone down well with the laptop friendly Modi.
His residence too is listed at Modi8217;s official home in the Gujarat government diary.

Tanmay Mehta
PA to Modi
He is the party man in Modi8217;s official team. Picked from Patan district BJP office by Modi himself, Mehta, a one time RSS apparatchik, has been his shadow for much of the past decade.
The 35-year-old, who knows the party in Gujarat like the back of his hand, is also the link between Modi and Om Mathur, party8217;s state in-charge. From fixing appointments to liaising with party men, this BJP worker was there throughout the election campaign. He even resigned from the CMO to avoid model code violations, though he will be back if Modi returns.

Parag Shah
Officer on Special Duty
Officer on Special Duty Information Technology in the Modi CMO, Parag Shah, 34, is the man responsible for much of Modi8217;s presence on the Internet. He manages Modi8217;s online complaints website SWAGAT, and keeps the ever increasing community of Modi-fans on the internet well supplied with digitized speeches and pictures of the Chief Minister.
Modi and Shah go back a long way. As L.K. Advani8217;s PA in 1998, Shah shared a room with Modi in the MP8217;s accommodation in Delhi. The association continued and Modi called him back from the United States on becoming the Chief Minister.
Shah was at the centre of an anonymous campaign alleging his links with the Sanjay Joshi sex-on-CD scandal. An official denial from the CMO only fuelled the speculation. Shah is silent on the controversy, preferring to speak only on his loyalty. 8216;8216;Sahab ke liye kuch bhi kar sakte hain, I can do anything for Sahab,8217;8217; he says.