Happy Birthday :: Narendra Modi [ 17th of September ]

September | Thursday | 17, 2015 :: Happy Birthday :: Narendra Modi [ 17^th of September ]

Narendra Damodardas Modi ( born 17 September 1950) is the 15th and current Prime Minister of India, in office since 26 May 2014. Modi, a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament (MP) from Varanasi. He led the BJP in the 2014 general election, which gave the party a majority in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the Indian parliament) – a first for any party since 1984 – and was credited for October 2014 BJP electoral victories in the states of Haryana and Maharashtra.

Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat). His family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community, which is categorised as an Other Backward Class by the Indian government. He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand (1915-1989) and Heeraben Modi (b. c. 1920). As a child Modi helped his father sell tea at the Vadnagar railway station, and later ran a tea stall with his brother near a bus terminus. He completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where a teacher described him as an average student and a keen debater with an interest in theatre. An early gift for rhetoric in debates was noted by teachers and students. Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.