After Ahmedabad and Lucknow, Delhi seems to be raising a toast to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi following his spectacular success in winning the state elections for the third time in a row.

Much before Modi arrives for the national development council (NDC) meeting here on Thursday, all roads from the Delhi airport to Vigyan Bhavan in Lutyens’ Delhi, venue for the meeting, were adorned with posters and banners welcoming Modi.

The Gujarat chief minister, along with his counterparts from other states, would participate in deliberations over the 12th five-year plan at the NDC meeting.

And in a clear pointer to what the party workers yearn for, these posters and banners carry Modi’s pictures along with that of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the last BJP leader to occupy the highest executive office in the country. The posters, of course, also have the pictures of the local BJP leaders ‘sponsoring’ them.

Other senior leaders of the party — including those of LK Advani, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and party president Nitin Gadkari — are however conspicuous by their absence, and that seems to tell its own tale.

Modi’s prime ministerial ambitions are well known but going by these posters the elevation seems to have already taken place so far as the party’s rank and file is concerned. For them, he is the man of the moment, and the leader for the future as well. A typical banner says, “Jan-jan ki yahi pukar, Gujarat jaisi ho rashtra ki sarkar” (People yearn for a Gujarat-like government for the nation).

On December 25, as the BJP was celebrating Vajpayee’s 88th birthday as Sushasan Divas (Good Governance Day), similar posters had come up in Lucknow, Vajpayee’s Lok Sabha seat for long. Those posters declared “Lal Quila par ho ekatma manav-vaad” (There should be integral humanism at the Red Fort) and “Badey lakshya ki hai tayyari; ab hai rashtra dharma ki baari” (Preparation is on to achieve a bigger target; now it is time for national duty).

Those, too, were as good an indicator as any.

There were also reports from Lucknow that several local BJP leaders had written to Gadkari, asking him to field Modi from Lucknow for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Vajpayee had represented the constituency five times.

Going by these posters, it seems there is a rising excitement among the party’s cadre about Modi, something that may cause some discomfort, not only among other contenders for the top post but also the brass of RSS, the ideological fountainhead which is increasingly pulling the strings from the backroom and seems not so well disposed toward Modi.