Amit Shah

Amitbhai Anilchandra "Amit" Shah (born 22 October 1964) is an Indian politician Gujarat and the current President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Shah was elected as an MLA from Sarkhej in four consecutive elections: 1997 (by-election), 1998, 2002 and 2007. 

He is a close associate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and held a number of portfolios in the state government during Modi's tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat. He is the MLA from Naranpura, elected in the 2012 elections.

Shah was the BJP's in-charge for India's largest and most politically crucial state, Uttar Pradesh, during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP and its allies swept the entire state, registering their best ever performance, by winning 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.

Under his leadership, BJP achieved success in Legislative Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand and Assam in 2014, but lost the elections in Delhi and Bihar in 2015. In 2017, he led the party towards landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and marked the party's strong debut in Manipur, but the Akali-BJP alliance lost power in Punjab. BJP also won 13 seats in Goa and now tactfully runs a coalition government with Manohar Parrikar as the CM for the 4th time.

Early life

Amit Shah was born in Mumbai, in a well-to-do Jain Gujarati-baniya family.His father Mansa, owned a successful PVC pipe business.He did his schooling in Mehsana and moved to Ahmedabad to study biochemistry at CU Shah Science College. He graduated with a B.Sc. degree in biochemistry, and then worked for his father's business.He also worked as a stockbroker and in co-operative banks in Ahmedabad.

Anilchandra Shah, a businessman from

Shah was involved with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh since childhood, participating 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 Ahmedabad RSS circles. At that time, Modi was an RSS pracharak (propagator), working as in-charge of youth activities in city.

Early political career

Amit Shah started his political career as a leader of the student wing of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, in 1983.He joined BJP in 1986, one year before Modi joined the party.He became an activist of BJP's youth wing Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) in 1987. He then gradually rose in the BJYM hierarchy, holding various posts including that of ward secretary, taluka secretary, state secretary, vice-president, and general secretary.He campaigned for Lal Krishna Advani in Gandhinagar during the 1991 Lok Sabha elections.

the RSS, the

In 1995, BJP formed its first government in Gujarat, with Keshubhai Patel as the Chief Minister. At that time, BJP's main rival Indian National Congress was highly influential in rural Gujarat. Modi and Shah worked together to decimate Congress in the rural areas. Their pradhan (village chief) post in various villages.

strategy was to find the second most influential leader in every village, and get him or her to join BJP. They created a network of 8,000 influential rural leaders who had lost elections to the

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

losses of

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

Modi, who had become a general secretary in the party's state unit by the early 1990s, used his influence to get bigger roles for Shah. He convinced Patel to appoint Shah as the chairman of the Gujarat State Financial Corporation, a public sector financial institution which finances small and medium-scale enterprises. After Shankersinh Vaghela and some other leaders complained about Modi's growing clout in the Gujarat government, the party leadership moved Modi out of Gujarat, to the BJP headquarters in Delhi. During this time (1995-2001), Shah served as Modi's informer in Gujarat.

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.

As a Gujarat minister

PM Modi addresses a BJP National Council Meet

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

Amit Shah contested the 2002 Assembly election from the Sarkhej constituency in Ahmedabad. He won by the highest margin among all candidates: 158,036 votes. In the 2007 Assembly election, he won from Sarkhej again, improving his margin of victory.

During Narendra 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 Central Government announced its intention to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, calling it regressive. Amit Shah piloted the Gujarat Control of Organised Crime (Amendment) Bill through Gujarat state assembly amid an opposition walk-out. Shah also played an important role in convincing the Narendra Modi government to pass the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, which made religious conversions difficult in the Hindu-majority Gujarat. His opponents argued that the Act went against the rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, but Shah defended the bill, calling it a measure against forced conversions. His efforts in getting the bill passed impressed the senior leadership of RSS.

Police encounter cases

Amit shah and Udit Raj

In 2010, Amit Shah was accused of having orchestrated the extrajudicial killings of a criminal Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife Kauser Bai and his criminal associate Tulsiram Prajapati. According to the CBI, Sohrabuddin had been harassing some marble traders of Rajasthan, by demanding hefty protection money. CBI claimed that two of these marble traders paid Amit Shah to eliminate Sohrabuddin. Amit Shah, along with the police officers DIG DG Vanzara and SP Rajkumar Pandian, allegedly hatched a plan to kill Sohrabuddin. In 2004, DCP Abhay Chudasama pressured Sohrabuddin and Tulsiram to fire at the office of two builder brothers - Raman Patel and Dashrath Patel.

This was done so that a fresh criminal case could be registered against Sohrabuddin and Tulsiram. The next year, the police picked up Sohrabuddin, Kausar Bi and Tulsiram, and took them to a farmhouse near Ahmedabad. Sohrabuddin was killed in a staged attack, with Vanzara claiming that he was a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative. Kausar Bi was also killed and cremated for being a witness. Tulsiram was initially let off, as he was an informer of Vanzara. He was eliminated later, after Sohrabuddin's death was exposed as an extrajudicial killing by a journalist. CBI claimed that Amit Shah had transferred Vanzara to various places in order to facilitate these killings.

Vanzara and several other officers were arrested in the case. As proof of Amit Shah's involvement in the crimes, the CBI presented phone call records, which showed that Shah had been in touch with the accused police officers when the victims were in their illegal custody. It also presented video tapes of Patel brothers' conversations with two of Amit Shah's associates at Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB). In the tape, ADCB Director Yashpal Chudasama and its Chairman Ajay Patel can be seen asking the brothers not to involve Amit Shah's name in the case. Yashpal Chudasama is the brother of the accused police officer Abhay Chudasama. According to CBI, Abhay used to run an extortion racket, with Sohrabuddin as his henchman.The Patel brothers, who had several criminal cases against them, also spoke against Amit Shah. They claimed that the police had falsely implicated them into various cases between 2001-2005 in order to extort money from them. They also claimed that Vanzara made them talk to Amit Shah over phone, and Amit Shah threatened them into giving a statement against Sohrabuddin and Tulsiram. They further stated that, in 2006, Ajay Patel and Abhay Chudasama called them again on behalf of Amit Shah, asking them to give certain statements to CBI.

Shah dismissed all the accusations against him as politically motivated. He pointed out that during his tenure as the Home Minister, Gujarat was one of the states with minimum number of police encounters in the country. He stated that he kept in touch with the police officers on the phone in the normal course of his duties as the home minister. He accused the Congress of misusing CBI, and claimed that only the encounter cases in Gujarat were being scrutinized when the rest of the country had witnessed around 1500 encounters during the same period. He said that if CBI had any solid evidence against him, it would have been able to frame charges against him. In 2010, Police Commissioner Geeta Johri, who first investigated the case, claimed that CBI was pressurizing her to falsely implicate Amit Shah in the Sohrabuddin case.

DG Vanzara was also accused in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, but the CBI gave Amit Shah a clean chit in the case.