Narendra Modi’s Right Hand Amit Shah Appointed As Union Home Minister (MHA)
Mumbai: A day after Amit Shah sworn-in as Union Minister at Rashtrapati Bhavan, Shah was appointed as Minister of Home Affairs (MHA).
Amit Shah, who has been the President of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 2014. After the high office of the state legislature, he was a Rajya Sabha MP from 2017 to 2019.
For the first time, Shah was elected as the MLA for the seat covering Ahmedabad in Gujarat in 1997 (under by-election in 1997), 1998, 2002 and 2007 till the dissolution of the seat, then for nearby Narnapura, Until 2012-2017 he is a close ally to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and is working as the Chief Executive Officer of the state government during Modi’s tenure.
Shah was associated with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh since childhood, as a boy, he used to participate in branches of the neighbourhood. He formally became an RSS volunteer (volunteer) during his college days in Ahmedabad. He first met Narendra Modi through the Ahmedabad RSS in 1982. At that time, Modi was an RSS pracharak (publicist), who was in charge of youth activities in the city.
In 1995, the BJP formed its first government in Gujarat with Keshubhai Patel as Chief Minister in Gujarat. At that time, the BJP’s main rival, the Indian National Congress, was highly influential in rural Gujarat. Modi and Shah worked to encircle the Congress in rural areas. His strategy was to find the second most influential leader in every village and to join him in the BJP. He created a network of 8,000 influential rural leaders who lost elections for the post of Pradhan (village head) in different villages.
Modi and Shah also demanded to reduce the hold of Congress on sports bodies in the state. Shah served as president of the Gujarat State Chess Federation. In 2009, she became the vice-president of Cash-Rich Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA), when Narendra Modi served as its president. In 2014, after Modi became the Prime Minister of India, Shah became president of GCA.
After the allegations of unskilled administration, in October 2001, BJP replaced Keshubhai Patel with Narendra Modi as Chief Minister of Gujarat. Over the next few years, Modi and Shah gradually overturned 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.
He has played an organizing and membership-promotional role in the elections of many states since 2014. In its initial two years, the BJP achieved success in the assembly elections in 2014 and Assam in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, but lost in 2015 in the big Eastern state of Delhi and Bihar.
