New Delhi, Feb 24 (IANS): It was 20 years ago on this day that Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarked on his journey as an elected public representative.

On February 24, 2002, Modi, as the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, had won the Rajkot II assembly bypoll. It was Modi's first electoral foray as till then he was assigned organisational duties in the BJP and prior to it, with RSS.

Modi had been sent by the BJP from Delhi to Gandhinagar to take over as the Gujarat Chief Minister in October 2001, following which it was necessary that he win the assembly seat within six months.

Senior BJP leader, Vajubhai Vala had vacated the seat for Modi, who defeated the Congress candidate by a margin of 14,718 votes. Nine months later, Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat had returned with a thumping majority at the assembly polls regular schedule in December 2002.

However, this time, he chose to represent Maninagar constituency, part of Ahmedabad.

He went on to win from the same constituency in 2007 and 2012 to govern Gujarat for three consecutive terms. In 2014, Modi was the Prime Ministerial face of the BJP and contested Lok Sabha from Vadodara in Gujarat and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, winning both with massive margins.

He went on to become the Prime Minister and chose to resign from Vadodara and continued to represent the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency in 2019 too.

Last year, Prime Minister Modi completed 20 years as head of a public office. On October 7, 2001, Modi was first sworn in as the Chief Minister of Gujarat and remained in the office for 13 years till he was sworn in as the Prime Minister in May 2014.

On completion of two decades as head of public office, the BJP had launched 20 days 'Seva Aur Samarpan Abhiyaan' on his birthday on September 17 and concluded it on October 7 to mark the anniversary of his two decades in public life.