A sweep of 90 out of 104 seats across three Gujarat municipal bodies — and the BJP's electoral machine shows no sign of slowing down. Union Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, took to X to celebrate the party's landslide victories in Gandhinagar, Okha, and Thara municipalities, framing the results as a direct public endorsement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's development and governance agenda.

In a bilingual post mixing Hindi and English, Puri declared: 'Vikas par vishwas' — 'Faith in development' — before laying out the arithmetic. 'The BJP continues to ride a wave of unprecedented popularity and surge ahead as the world's largest political movement,' he wrote, attributing the mandate to 'people's unwavering faith in the visionary policies of financial and social inclusion' under PM Modi's leadership.

Gujarat's 90-of-104 result and what it signals

The three municipalities — Gandhinagar, Okha, and Thara — returned a combined tally of 90 BJP seats out of 104 contested, a dominance rate that underscores the party's near-unassailable grip on Gujarat's urban civic landscape. Gujarat has been BJP territory for decades, and it was the laboratory where Narendra Modi, as Chief Minister from 2001 to 2014, first road-tested the development-first governance model that later shaped national policy.

Puri's post draws a direct line between that original Gujarat experiment and the welfare and infrastructure programmes rolled out under the NDA government since May 2014. The argument: when voters see tangible change in their lives — roads, homes, bank accounts — they return the mandate. 'When development brings change in people's lives, it manifests as public support,' Puri wrote in Hindi.

Beyond Gujarat: by-elections and local polls in four states

The Minister's post broadens the victory lap well past Gujarat's borders. Puri cited recent by-election results in West Bengal and Assam as further evidence of Modi-era momentum, and pointed to strong local body election performances in Rajasthan and Gram Samiti elections in Tripura as proof that NDA's footprint is widening at the grassroots level.

Taken together, the narrative Puri is constructing is one of a pan-India electoral machine powered by a decade-old development compact — one that began in one western state and now commands loyalty across regions as politically diverse as Bengal's competitive urban wards and Tripura's village councils.

The 'world's largest political movement' claim

Puri's description of BJP as 'the world's largest political movement' is a recurring formulation the party uses, rooted in its consistently cited membership figures that have placed it ahead of China's Communist Party in raw numbers. The framing is deliberate: it positions local victories not merely as civic triumphs but as proof-points in a larger civilisational-scale democratic story.

He closed by extending congratulations to 'all members of the party family' and expressing gratitude to the electorate — 'Janta-Janardan ka hridaya se aabhar' ('heartfelt gratitude to the people') — tagging BJP's national and state handles for Gujarat, Rajasthan, Bengal, Assam, and Tripura.

Gujarat gave Modi his national launch-pad. Two decades on, local body elections there are still being read as a barometer for the BJP's national pulse — and right now, that pulse is running strong.