A BJP poster hailing Modi pasted on a street lamp in Delhi, under a Congress poster, on Thursday. Picture by Yasir Iqbal

New Delhi, Nov. 20: Over a decade ago, Atal Bihari Vajpayee had flown back home “neither tired nor retired” but surely a little undermined by comparisons with a rival.

Narendra Modi today returned virtually to the sound of trumpets from a party where, at least for the moment, he has no challengers.

At 11pm yesterday, the Delhi BJP had got a terse message from party central headquarters. It said Modi should get a “welcome” befitting a “conquering hero” when his flight landed at Palam airport this morning.

“The cadre got instantly activated,” a state BJP source said. Slogans were coined and posters digitally printed and plastered across Lutyens Delhi, some positioned right below the Congress’s placards for its recent Nehru convention.

“It wasn’t deliberate,” Delhi BJP spokesperson Harish Khurana protested, “maybe some workers got carried away by the Congress posters and put Modiji’s next to them.”

If the Congress’s visuals displayed a pantheon of Nehru-Gandhis, the BJP’s depicted a single man.

One of them showed the Prime Minister beaming with his Australian counterpart, Tony Abbott. Another screamed a slogan: “Vishwa daure se Modi aaye, Bharat kaa parcham fehraye (Modi has returned from a world trip, having unfurled India’s flag).”

By the crack of dawn, nearly 1,500 BJP workers were at Palam to greet Modi with cries of: “Bharat kaa dulara hai, vishwa ka pyara hai (He’s India’s darling, the world’s favourite).”

Modi broke the security cordon and shook hands with as many supporters as he could.

“He showed no sign of jet lag or weariness. He connected with his usual ease with our workers, just like he had done with his fans in Australia and Fiji,” claimed the party’s Delhi minder, Rajya Sabha member Prabhat Jha.

Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj was the lone cabinet minister present, carrying a bouquet of flowers --- a ritual she repeats after each of Modi’s overseas trips.

Jha said that unlike Vajpayee, Modi was against his cabinet colleagues lining up to greet him on his return from foreign tours and wanted them to focus on their jobs instead.

On Modi’s schedule today were a meeting with former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, who is in Delhi, and a cabinet session to clear bills for Parliament’s winter session. Tomorrow morning, he is to fly to Jharkhand to kick off the Assembly poll campaign.

“Not for nothing has he earned the tag of a star. His only aim is to take India and the BJP forward, and he will not waste a minute,” Jha said.

For the BJP, at the moment, Modi can do no wrong. Vajpayee didn’t have such luck. For instance, he had returned from abroad in the summer of 2003 to walk on a red carpet riddled with thorns.

If “success” was measured by photo-ops, words and gestures, Vajpayee had captivated a host of global leaders during his three-nation trip.

He had sat next to then US President George W. Bush at a banquet hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin for 40-odd world leaders at the Petrodvorets Palace in St Petersburg.

Bush had praised Vajpayee’s latest peace initiative with Pakistan, only to be told by the Prime Minister that the peace process would not succeed until cross-border terrorism ended.

At the extended G8 dialogue in Evian, Vajpayee had pitched for reforming international trade to enable the developing countries to secure support for further trade liberalisation.

Finally, in Lausanne, without adopting an openly anti-US position, he had stressed that all independent-minded countries must work together to create a multi-polar world.

Vajpayee later remarked that because of India enjoying a “certain” global status, he had been able to meet all the five permanent members of the UN Security Council within a span of 24 hours.

But as Vajpayee savoured his “achievements” abroad, then BJP president M. Venkaiah Naidu appeared to belittle him somewhat back home.

Naidu told a news conference that the 2004 general election would be fought under the combined leadership of Vikas Purush (Development Man) Vajpayee and Lauh Purush (Iron Man) L.K. Advani, the deputy Prime Minister.

A flurry of phone calls between Lausanne and Delhi later, a red-faced Naidu amended his statement and emphasised that Vajpayee alone would lead the BJP into the next election.

Vajpayee himself delivered the knockout punch the day he arrived to a sombre reception at the airport.

Naidu had been forced to assemble a group of party workers and convene a felicitation for Vajpayee at the Prime Minister’s residence. Vajpayee ended his pithy address with a cryptic sentence: “(I am) neither tired nor retired, but under Advani’s leadership the party will march towards victory (in 2014).”

Convinced that Vajpayee was peeved at Naidu’s comments, the cabinet collectively congratulated him the following morning for his “successful” tour. With hindsight, it appears that Naidu’s comment may not have been a spur-of-the-moment gaffe.

Vajpayee’s position in the BJP and his government had by then been weakened by the Gujarat violence of 2002 and his inability to replace Modi as the chief minister. Today, Modi stands supreme in party and government, at least for the moment.