The Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar announced this week it wanted Narendra Modi as their candidate for Prime Minister.

The response from party headquarters was immediate. President Rajnath Singh ordered other state units not to follow Bihar and to refrain from putting pressure on the matter of Mr Modi as undisputed national leader.
No other state, not even Gujarat, has pushed for Mr Modi in this fashion. So what can we make of the story? One of two things could have prompted the Bihar BJP to do what they did. First, that it was to spite their former partner in the state, Nitish Kumar. The chief minister broke the Janata Dal’s alliance with the BJP over the issue of Mr Modi in a particularly nasty separation. It could be that the BJP in the state was thumbing their nose at him.
The second possibility is to my mind the more likely one. There is a consensus among the cadre of the party across India that Mr Modi is the man to lead them. He is charismatic, personally popular with large sections of electorate nationwide and, most important, represents uncompromising Hindutva better than any other leader.
This consensus in the lower ranks was recognised by Bihar. Because the party there had lost its role in government, there was not much to restrain them from expressing their view.
In other states where the BJP is competitive, such as Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, we are unlikely to see such a move. This is because in these units there are people — Shivraj Chouhan in Bhopal, for instance — who see themselves as outside contenders for the job and don’t think of Mr Modi as being anything bigger than a state leader.
But this does not alter the fundamental reality, which is that the grassroots BJP worker and the party member of legislative Assembly (MLA) and member of Parliament (MP) have lined up behind Gujarat’s chief minister. The other aspect, and I have written about this before, is that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has come down in favour of Mr Modi. The period of reluctance which it showed, given its displeasure at the unilateral manner in which Mr Modi had run the party and the government in Gujarat, is clearly over.
The Sangh is recognising the voice of its own karyakartas, of whom Mr Modi was one and who are all greatly enamoured of him. This is why the rebellion of L.K. Advani was so short-lived and why it fizzled out in a day. He has seen the message clearly.
Now I have referred in this column to the reasons why I think Mr Modi will not openly offer himself as prime ministerial candidate.
This week a report in a couple of newspapers listed another reason. The worry in the Modi camp is that he will have to step down as chief minister of Gujarat if made the prime ministerial candidate. The BJP has polled poorly in all three opinion polls, which show it will not win a majority or come close to winning one. And so it would be foolhardy for Mr Modi to throw away Gujarat now in the hope of getting India next year.
At the moment he is in a great position. He has no rivals for the top job, and when it comes within reach in 2014, the party cadre and the Sangh are right behind him.
And despite the poor polling numbers for the BJP, Mr Modi personally remains hugely popular with the electorate and two separate polls show him as the most preferred Prime Minister. That is why he has himself made no response either to acknowledge the Bihar unit for its support or to distance himself from it.

Aakar Patel is a writer and columnist