 "BJP marks Modi's birthday with minority membership drive")
While party workers and Modi’s colleagues conducted a maha aarti at the Lord Jagannath temple and prayed for his wellbeing and long life, Modi began his day by seeking blessings from his 95-year-old mother, Hiraba. The CM, who completed 63 years on Tuesday, met her at her residence in Gandhinagar early in the morning. She gifted Modi a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and wished him well. “I have faith that people's blessings won't go waste; it will give me strength to go on with my work,” Modi said after visiting his mother.
Modi also met former chief minister and political adversary Keshubhai Patel at his residence to seek his blessings. Patel had parted ways with the BJP last year and floated his own Gujarat Parivartan Party. BJP members organised a maha aarti to commemorate Modi’s birthday and his elevation as the party’s prime ministerial candidate. A special twitter handle, #NamoBirthday, has also been created for those who wanted to wish the Gujarat chief minister. A special section has been created on Modi's official website, which says, “It’s Shri Narendra Modi’s birthday on 17th September and what can be a better day to send him best wishes? Log in and send best wishes to him.” There is also a provision to send e-greetings. Members of the BJP Minority Morcha celebrated by cutting a 64-kg cake in the minority-dominated Jamalpur area. They wished him success in his new role in national politics.
The BJP also kicked off a mass membership drive, under which it hopes to enroll at least 100,000 people from the minority community into the party. The nine-day drive, which commenced from Tuesday, will conclude on September 25 on the birth anniversary of Deendayal Upadhyay, leader of the erstwhile Bharatiya Jana Sangh.
This drive has been planned with an eye on the 2014 general elections, in which Modi will be playing a key role for the BJP, as he is also heading the party’s poll campaign committee.
In Surat, a sweet shop owner announced a special discount on Modi’s birthday. “Today being the birthday of Narendra Modi, we have introduced the Namo birthday discount offer, wherein customers will get discounts on all purchases they make,” said shop owner Munnabhai Desai. The salesmen in the shop wore Modi masks while attending to customers. In Jamnagar, another sweet shop owner had embossed images of Modi on the sweets.