Ahmedabad:
It's a slam-dunk for Narendra Modi and the BJP in Gujarat's municipal elections.
There were six municipal corporations at stake, and the BJP has held onto all of them with ease. Besides Ahmedabad, the BJP won the civic polls in Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot and Bhavnagar with a two-thirds majority. The party, which decimated the Congress, got a simple majority in Jamnagar.
Contesting his communal image, the chief minister said, after the results, "Even Muslims voted for the Gujarat BJP. We have managed to win their hearts and that reflects in our huge victory."
It certainly hasn't been an effortless victory. Modi addressed about six rallies a day in the run-up to the elections. He also got by with a little help from some well-known friends. National leaders like Sushma Swaraj and Nitin Gadkari were paraded before voters, and they focused on the development Modi has brought to Gujarat.
The scale of the campaign was unprecedented for municipal elections. But Modi had a giant point to prove.
The Sohrabuddin case, and the arrest of Amit Shah, one his closest aides, posed a measured threat to the chief minister. Shah, the CBI alleged, had full knowledge of - and had even possibly commissioned - the conspiracy by senior Gujarat policemen to kill a small-time criminal named Sohrabuddin Sheikh in 2005, and then misrepresent his death as an encounter with a terrorist who planned to assassinate Modi.
Shah was Modi's Minister of State for Home. As the investigation progressed, Modi's supporters worried, he might find himself within striking distance of the Opposition. In March this year, Modi had been interrogated by the Special Investigating Team looking into the Gujarat riots of 2002. His Teflon-like popularity would be partially tested, agreed supporters and critics, by the municipal polls.
Modi's goals haven't entirely been met with today's election results. He fielded nine Muslim candidates, all of them have lost.
But he has proved yet again that scenarios that could leave other politicians winded barely graze him.