NEWSMAKER - Narendra Modi shows he's unstoppable

While few Muslim victims of the 2002 riots got justice, Modi chose to focus on growth and development and even earned the praise of some of India's top industrialists.

Analysts are unable to agree on whether he has been praised too much within Gujarat or demonised excessively outside.

However, most agree that he seems set to play a larger role for the party, possibly at the national level.

"Why Modi has retooled himself as a typical, middle-class politician is obvious: he has larger pan-Indian ambitions," Ashis Nandy, a leading commentator and clinical psychologist, wrote in the Outlook magazine this month.

"His present incarnation, as part of the political mainstream, makes him less fearsome but more dangerous. In five years, he has a fair chance of making it to the top of his party at the national level."