[1][2][3] The BJP national leadership sought a new candidate for the chief ministership, and Modi, who had expressed misgivings about Patel's administration, was chosen as a replacement.

Modi declined an offer to become Patel's deputy chief minister, telling Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee he was "going to be fully responsible for Gujarat or not at all".

On 3 October 2001, Modi replaced Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat with the responsibility of preparing the BJP for the upcoming December 2002 election.

[a][10] The train carried a large number of Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid.

[20][24][25] The Modi government imposed a curfew in 26 major cities, issued shoot-at-sight orders and called for the army to patrol the streets; these measures failed to prevent the violence from escalating.

[29][30][31] According to Martha Nussbaum, "There is by now a broad consensus that the Gujarat violence was a form of ethnic cleansing, that in many ways it was premeditated, and that it was carried out with the complicity of the state government and officers of the law".

[32] In March 2008, the Supreme Court of India reopened several cases related to the riots, including that of the Gulbarg Society massacre, and established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the issue.

[38] In 2022, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition by Zakia Jafri in which she challenged the clean chit given to Modi in the riots by the SIT, and upheld previous rulings that no evidence against him was found.

[39][40][41] Following the violence, calls for Modi to resign as chief minister were made from politicians within and outside the state, including leaders of Janata Dal (United) and the Telugu Desam Party—partners in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition—and opposition parties stalled Parliament over the issue.

[44] Modi framed the criticism of his government for human rights violations as an attack upon Gujarati pride,[50][46] a strategy that led to the BJP winning 127 of the 182[45] seats—a two-thirds majority—in the state assembly.

He wrote a foreword to a 2014 textbook by Dinanath Batra, which made the unscientific claim that ancient India possessed technologies including test-tube babies.

[65] Modi criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh "for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislation" such as the 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act.

[72] Despite the BJP's shift away from explicit Hindutva, Modi's campaigns in 2007 and 2012 Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections contained elements of Hindu nationalism.

[76] The boom in cotton production and its semi-arid land use[78] led to Gujarat's agricultural sector growing at an average rate of 9.6 per cent from 2001 to 2007.

[76] In 2008, Modi offered land in Gujarat to Tata Motors to set up a plant manufacturing the Nano car after popular agitation had forced the company to move out of West Bengal.

Modi's policies of making Gujarat attractive for investment included the creation of Special Economic Zones in which labour laws were greatly weakened.

[46] Despite its growth rate, Gujarat had a relatively poor record on human development, poverty relief, nutrition and education during Modi's tenure.

[89] From 2001 to 2011, Gujarat did not change its position relative to the rest of the country with respect to poverty and female literacy, remaining near the median of the 29 Indian states.

[27] Development in Gujarat was generally limited to the urban middle class, and citizens in rural areas and those from lower castes were increasingly marginalised.

These diaries contained references of alleged payments made to leaders belonging to as many as 18 political parties including BJP, Congress, JDU, BJD etc.

[95][96] In November 2016, advocate Prashant Bhushan had filed a plea in the Supreme Court of India asking for investigation of the alleged bribe payments made to some senior public servants including Modi.

[97][98] A Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Arun Kumar Mishra dismissed the plea in January 2017 stating that the evidence provided was insufficient.

[99][100] Later on, Justice Mishra was criticised by a section of advocates and activists for siding with the Modi government in multiple judgements during his tenure at the Supreme Court.