The 49-year-old is often credited for playing a key role in the rise of Narendra Modi both in the politics of Gujarat as well as nationally.
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE general elections in India will be due in April and May and while the national election body has not yet announced the schedule, the contesting parties have already started announcing names of the candidates they have decided to field from various constituencies of the nation. Elections will be held to 543 constituencies of the popularly elected Lok Sabha or Lower House of the parliament and the party or alliance securing 272 of them will form the government.
India Weekly is looking into the political careers of various leaders who will contest the upcoming elections in which prime minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party are aiming to win their third consecutive term in office.
Today, we look at Amit Shah, India’s home minister and minister for co-operation as well as the chairperson of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. However, more than these posts, Shah is known to be Modi’s Man Friday who played a big role in the latter’s overwhelming wins in the 2014 and 2019 elections. He is known to be the second-most powerful man in the BJP after the prime minister.
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Born in a Gujarati Hindu family in Mumbai in 1964, Amit Anil Chandra Shah was not always a national name in Indian politics. The son of a businessman, he did his schooling in Gujarat’s Mehsana and studied biochemistry at CU Shah Science College in Ahmedabad. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and joined his father’s business. He also has experience working as a stockbroker and in co-operative banks in Ahmedabad.
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He was involved with the Hindu right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor to the BJP, since his childhood days. He took part in activities held by the local branches of the body and became an RSS volunteer during his college days. He first came to know Modi in the early 1980s when the latter was a RSS pracharak (preacher) and was in charge of youth activities in Ahmedabad.
Shah became a leader of the RSS’s student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, in 1983 and joined the BJP four years later. He became an activist of the BJP’s youth wing the same year — 1987 — and gradually rose through the ranks. Shah was soon known for his management skills, particularly when he worked as the election campaign manager for BJP stalwart and former Indian deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani in the constituency of Gandhinagar in Gujarat during the 1991 general elections. Shah went on to replace Advani in the same seat in the 2019 general elections. He will contest from the same seat in this year’s election.
Shah joined hands with Modi to reduce the influence of the Indian National Congress, the BJP’s main rival in Gujarat as well as Indian politics, after the BJP formed its first government in Gujarat in 1995 under the chief ministership of Keshubhai Patel. Shah had also become the chief of various sporting bodies in Gujarat, including chess and cricket.
Shah was first elected as a state lawmaker in Gujarat in 1997 (from the now abolished seat of Sarkhej) and continued in the state till 2017 when he moved to Delhi to become a member of the Rajya Sabha or the Upper House of the Indian parliament. After Modi took over as the chief minister of Gujarat in 2001, Shah became a highly influential leader in the state government and served in several top ministerial capacity, including home, border security and law and justice. He was only 38 when he first became a minister in the Modi government in Gujarat in 2002 but he held several portfolios at one time.
Shah is also known for various controversial episodes, like allegations over sidelining police officers who testified against the Gujarat government in case related to fake encounters. He was arrested in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter killing case in Gujarat but he returned stronger.
Shah’s rise in national politics has been meteoric. His management skills earned him the sobriquet of Chanakya (ancient Indian polymath and strategist) or master strategist as he almost single-handedly won for the BJP the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh to help Modi become the prime minister. He served as the president of the BJP between 2014 and 2020 during when he led the BJP to win several elections across the country and made Modi’s base stronger.
The leader contested the 2019 general elections — his first ever national polls — in which he represented the BJP in the place of Advani and won by a big margin in Gandhinagar. He became India’s 34th home minister in 2019 and the first minister of cooperation in 2021 and during this time, India saw some significant decisions being taken by the government in New Delhi, including repeal of Article 370 of the Constitution that gave Jammu and Kashmir a special status and passing of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act which grants Indian citizenship to religiously persecuted minority communities who migrated to India before December 2014 from the Muslim-majority nations of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
Shah also announced that the National Register of Citizens will be implemented in the country, triggering a massive controversy and protest by opposition parties.
Amit Shah’s electoral record:
1997: Won a Gujarat state assembly by-election in Sarkhej constituency by 24,482 votes
1998: Won Gujarat state assembly election in Sarkhej by 132,477 votes
2002: Won Gujarat state assembly election in Sarkhej by 158,036 votes
2007: Won Gujarat state assembly election in Sarkhej by 235,823 votes
2012: Won Gujarat state assembly election in Naranpura by 63,335 votes
2017: Won the Rajya Sabha election and served till 2019
2019: Won in Gandhinagar in general elections by 557,014 votes