Amit Shah

Amit Anilchandra Shah (born 22 October 1964) is an Indian politician who is serving as the 31st Minister of Home Affairs since 2019, the longest-serving holder of the office in Indian history. Additionally he has been the 1st Minister of Co-operation since July 2021. He is also the member of parliament (MP) for Gandhinagar. He served as the 10th president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from 2014 to 2020. He has also served as chairman of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) since 2014. He had been elected as a member of the upper house of parliament, Rajya Sabha, from Gujarat from 2017 to 2019. Shah is a chief strategist of the BJP and an ardent ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Shah also served as a member of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly from Naranpura Assembly constituency from 2012 to 2017 and Sarkhej from 1997 to 2012 and the minister of State for Home, Law and Justice, Prison, Border Security, Civil Defense, Excise, Home Guards, Transport, Prohibition, Gram Rakshak Dal, Police Housing, Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs, government of Gujarat in the Modi ministry from 2002 to 2012. During his college days, Shah was a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindutva paramilitary organisation. At the age of 18, he secured a position in the ABVP and joined the BJP in 1987.

Shah was the BJP's in-charge for India's largest and politically most crucial state, Uttar Pradesh, during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP-led NDA won 73 out of 80 seats. As a result, Shah rose to national prominence and was appointed as the party's national president in July 2014. He has played an organising and membership-promotional role in the elections of many states since 2014. In his initial two years, the BJP achieved success in legislative assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand and Assam but lost ground in Delhi and the large eastern state of Bihar in 2015.

In 2017, he was partly credited with the party victories in Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in India by population, as well as Uttarakhand, his home state, Gujarat and Manipur. However, the Akali–BJP alliance lost power in the Punjab election. In 2018, the party lost power in the states of Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. A year later, the BJP won 303 seats to get a majority in the 2019 Indian general election under Shah's party leadership.

Amit Anilchandra Shah is born into a Gujarati Hindu Bania family of Mansa on 22 October 1964 at Mumbai. His great-grandfather was the Nagarseth (town's headman/Chief Merchant) of the small Princely state of Mansa. His father, Anilchandra Shah, a businessman from Mansa, owned a successful PVC pipe business.

He went to school in Mehsana and moved to Ahmedabad to study biochemistry at CU Shah Science College. He graduated with a Bachelor's of Science (B.Sc.) in biochemistry and then worked for his father's business. He also worked as a stockbroker and in co-operative banks in Ahmedabad. Shah was associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindutva paramilitary volunteer organisation, since childhood; he participated in the neighbourhood shakhas (branches) as a boy. He formally became an RSS swayamsevak (volunteer) during his college days in Ahmedabad. He first met Narendra Modi in 1982 through the Ahmedabad RSS circles. At that time, Modi was an RSS pracharak (propagator), working as in-charge of youth activities in the city.

Shah started his political career in 1982 after joining the RSS. Soon after, he got acquainted with Narendra Modi, a pracharak (propagator) of the RSS at that time. Reportedly, he was advised by Modi to join the student wing of the RSS, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). Soon after Shah joined the ABVP in the year 1983. Later on, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1987, one year before Modi joined the party. He became an activist of the BJP's youth wing, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), in 1987. He gradually rose in the BJYM hierarchy, in which he held various posts including ward secretary, taluka secretary, state secretary, vice-president and general secretary. He became known for his management skills when he was the election campaign manager for Lal Krishna Advani in Gandhinagar during the 1991 Lok Sabha elections.

In 1995, the BJP formed its first government in Gujarat, with Keshubhai Patel as Chief Minister. At that time, the Indian National Congress, the BJP's main rival, was highly influential in rural Gujarat. Modi and Shah worked together to eliminate Congress in the rural areas. Their strategy was to find the second-most influential leader in every village and get them to join the BJP. They created a network of 8,000 influential rural leaders who had lost elections to the pradhan (village chief) post in various villages.

Modi and Shah used the same strategy to reduce Congress' influence over the state's powerful co-operatives, which played an important role in the state's economy. In 1999, Shah was elected as the president of the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), the biggest cooperative bank in India. In Gujarat, such elections had traditionally been won on caste considerations, and the co-operative banks had traditionally been controlled by Patels, Gadarias and Kshatriyas. Despite not belonging to any of these castes, Shah won the election. At that time, the bank was on the verge of collapse, as they had accumulated losses of ₹36 crores. Shah turned around the bank's fortune within a year; the following year, the bank registered a profit of ₹27 crores. By 2014, its profit had increased to around ₹250 crores. Shah also ensured that 11 of the bank's 22 directors were BJP loyalists.

Modi and Shah also sought to reduce Congress' hold over sports bodies in the state. Shah served as the president of the Gujarat State Chess Association. In 2009, he became the vice-president of the profitable Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA), while Modi served as its president. In 2014, after Modi became Prime Minister of India, Shah became the president of GCA.

In 1997, Modi lobbied to get Shah a BJP ticket for the Gujarat Legislative Assembly by-election in Sarkhej. Shah became an MLA in February 1997 after winning the by-election. He retained his seat in the 1998 Assembly elections.

In October 2001, the BJP replaced Keshubhai Patel with Narendra Modi as the chief minister of Gujarat after allegations of inefficient administration. Over the next few years, Modi and Shah gradually sidelined their political rivals.

Shah contested the 2002 Assembly election from the Sarkhej constituency in Ahmedabad. He won by the highest margin among all candidates, with 158,036 votes. He improved his margin of victory in the 2007 Assembly election, in which he won from Sarkhej again. During Modi's twelve-year tenure as the Gujarat CM, Shah emerged as one of the most powerful leaders in Gujarat. After winning the 2002 elections, he became the youngest minister in the Modi government and was given multiple portfolios. At one time, he held 12 portfolios: Home, Law and Justice, Prison, Border Security, Civil Defence, Excise, Transport, Prohibition, Home Guards, Gram Rakshak Dal, Police Housing and Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs.

In 2004, the Congress-led government announced its intention to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which they called regressive. Shah piloted the Gujarat Control of Organised Crime (Amendment) Bill through the Gujarat State Assembly amid an opposition walk-out. Shah also played an important role in convincing the Modi government to pass the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Bill, which made religious conversions difficult in the state of Gujarat. The act requires religious conversions in the state – most of which are from Hinduism to other religions – to be approved by a district magistrate. Shah portrayed the bill as a measure against forced conversions, although critics claimed that the bill undermined the Indian Constitution. Between 2011 and 2016, approximately half of the applications for religious conversion in Gujarat were declined by the local government.

In 2013, Shah was accused of having ordered illegal surveillance on a woman in 2009 during his tenure as a home minister. The investigative websites Cobrapost and Gulail released a set of taped audio conversations between Shah and police officer GL Singhal. The tapes had been submitted to the CBI in the Ishrat Jahan case and were leaked to these portals. The calls detail how the state machinery was used to surveil the woman and the IAS officer Pradeep Sharma (who was suspended by the Gujarat government). In the recordings, both Singhal and Shah repeatedly refer to a higher authority as Saheb, which is believed to be Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Shah denied all the accusations against him; he called them political propaganda by his opponents. The BJP's political opponents demanded a probe in the Snoopgate case. However, in May 2014, the woman approached the Supreme Court and stated that the surveillance on her was based on a "personal request", and she was thankful to the Gujarat government for ensuring her safety. She requested the court to block any investigation, stating it would violate her privacy.

After Modi became the prime-ministerial candidate of the BJP, Shah's influence also increased in the party. They had been accused of sidelining other BJP leaders, such as Lal Krishna Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Murli Manohar Joshi and Jaswant Singh. By this time, Shah had gained recognition as an excellent election campaign manager and was dubbed a "modern-day Chanakya and master strategist". Shah was appointed as a BJP general secretary and given charge of Uttar Pradesh (UP). He was chosen not by Modi, but by Rajnath Singh, who had been impressed by the skills Shah displayed in wresting control of various Congress-controlled organisations in Gujarat. The decision did not go down well with many of the party members, who saw him as a liability owing to the criminal charges against him. Political analyst Shekhar Gupta termed the decision as a blunder.

During his time as a general secretary of the BJP, party members credited Shah with promoting Hindutva, encouraging Hindu voters to reject "protectors of minorities", and opposing Modi's attempts to reconcile with the Muslim community.

Shah's political career, which had declined after his arrest in 2010, revived after the BJP's victory in the 2014 general election. In Uttar Pradesh, where Shah was the in-charge, the BJP and its allies won 73 out of 80 seats. Shah had been made in-charge of the BJP's campaign in Uttar Pradesh on 12 June 2013, less than a year before the elections. Since February 2012, Shah had spent considerable time in Uttar Pradesh, where he tried to understand the reasons for the Samajwadi Party's victory in the 2012 UP Assembly elections. Shah realised the voters were dissatisfied with the Samajwadi Party, which he believed had failed to keep its election promises after the win. He also took advantage of the OBC voters' displeasure with the UP government's decision to create a 4.5% reservation for the minorities within the 27% OBC quota in government jobs and education.

Shah oversaw the candidate selection, emphasising the candidate's local popularity and winning potential as the only criteria for selection, as opposed to the candidate's party loyalty or ideology. His team estimated that only 35% of the BJP's traditional supporters had voted in the UP elections. Therefore, he focused on door-to-door campaigning at the booth-level. He set up a 7-to-10 member management committee for each of the 140,000 voting booths in the state. For each booth, his team collated lists of voters and reached out to them. Shah's team used 450 GPS-enabled mobile vans (video raths) to reach out to the masses in remote areas, where media reach was negligible. Shah covered 76 out of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies. He also insisted on Modi contesting election from Varanasi.

Shah convinced Modi to utilise RSS volunteers for grassroots campaigning, which proved highly beneficial for the BJP. Although the RSS officially were not involved in electioneering, Shah used its volunteers to mobilise and monitor the campaigners. For example, the RSS volunteers would cross-check a BJP worker's claims of having targeted a given number of households. Shah also helped organise "mega rallies" for Modi. Like other major political parties, the BJP provisioned one van per village to transport people to the rally venue. However, unlike others, Shah decided that the BJP would not provide money for hiring these vehicles. Instead, he declared that the party workers organising the transportation would be the leaders of the BJP units in their villages. This strategy ensured several local village leaders developed a stake in Modi's victory.

Critics accused Shah of trying to polarise the UP voters along the religious lines. While visiting Ayodhya for a meeting with the party's local committee, he raised the Ayodhya dispute. The BJP fielded three candidates accused of inciting violence during the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. These were seen as attempts to target the party's Hindu nationalist base. An FIR was registered against Shah for a speech in Muzaffarnagar, where he urged the voters to seek "revenge" through their votes. He also took advantage of Shia Muslim antipathy towards Sunni Muslims in Lucknow.