Wednesday witnessed rare scenes on the Gujarat Assembly floor as MLAs cut across party lines to bid an emotional farewell to the State’s four-time Chief Minister and now Prime Minister-elect, Narendra Modi.

An emotional Modi, in his last speech from the treasury bench as the CM, said: “People ask me what is the Gujarat model, I would like to show them this (House) where everybody has come together for a good cause.” He became teary during his 22-minute speech.

Representatives from the opposition Congress, NCP and JD(U), along with leaders from the ruling BJP, greeted the newly elected PM at a specially convened two-hour Assembly session.

However, the Leader of Opposition, the Congress’ Shankarsinh Vaghela, listed out a few demands to the PM and expected resolution from the next Government.

“There is no one to stop you now. You have the majority in the House, so we would expect resolution to the pending demands from Gujarat,” said Vaghela, who hugged Modi and greeted him with a shawl soon after the latter entered the house.

Vaghela listed out key demands that Modi had raised, including raising the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada and putting gates on the dam; demand for coal for Gujarat’s power plants from western coal fields; domestic gas; resolution of crude oil royalty issues; making Gujarat a petrochemicals hub; and setting up of metro rail between Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad, along with issues like central sales tax recovery.

Interestingly, Modi, as a chief minister, had been criticising the Manmohan Singh government for non-resolution of these demands.

Referring to Modi’s Gujarat roots, Vaghela mentioned that it was a coincidence that Modi would be the second Prime Minister from Gujarat after Morarji Desai, who had connections with Godhra.

According to him, Desai was a deputy collector at Godhra during British rule in 1927 and, in 1977, he was made the Prime Minister. “Narendrabhai Modi has worked as karyakarta in Godhra and Vadodara. I would not like to go to recall the Godhra issue in 2002. But, it seems that the road to Prime Minister goes via Godhra,” he said.

Vaghela went on to make a satirical comment with regard to the construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya. “Because of the coalition politics at the time of NDA you could not realise the Ram temple promise. Now, you have the full majority even without the NDA partners. You can very well go ahead and build the temple within the constitutional framework,” he said.

Modi, however, promised the house and assured it of total support from the Centre. “I can’t promise to favour Gujarat. But I can assure you that Gujarat will not get injustice,” he said.

“If at all during my tenure as chief minister, I hurt anybody knowingly or unknowingly, if there were faults in my administration or shortcomings in my governance,… this is the time for apologies,” an emotional Modi told the gathering.

The special session was also attended by industry captains from Gujarat including Tulsi Tanti of Suzlon, Pankaj Patel of Zydus Cadila, Sanjay Lalbhai of Arvind Mills, Sudhir Mehta of Torrent Group, Piruz Khambhatta of Rasna, BK Goenka of Welspun, Rajiv Modi of Cadila Pharmaceuticals, Chintan Parikh of Ashima Textiles and Karsanbhai Patel of Nirma. BJP veterans including Keshubhai Patel and Purshottam Rupala were also seen sitting at the visitors’ gallery.