New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah on Friday was appointed as Minister of Home Affairs (MHA) a day after he was sworn in as Union Minister in the forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Shah’s predecessor Rajnath Singh was appointed as the Defence Minister.
A trusted lieutenant of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shah vacated his Rajya Sabha seat to contest the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections and won from Gandhinagar parliamentary constituency.
Shah also referred as ‘Chanakya’ of modern day politics, had handled several key portfolios in the Gujarat government including the Home Ministry when BJP returned to power with Narendra Modi as its Chief Minister in 2002.
Meanwhile, who will be appointed as the party chief is yet to be ascertained.
He was party in-charge of Uttar Pradesh in 2014 and helped BJP and its allies win 73 out of 80 seats. In 2019 too, Shah managed BJP election campaign and also rigorously campaigned at the same time, which lead BJP winning 303 seats. BJP became the first party in India, since 1971, to return with full majority.
Shah in the past had managed election campaigns of BJP since 1989. With his excellent election management expertise, he managed the election campaign of BJP stalwart Lal Krishna Advani’s election from Ahmedabad constituency in 1989.
Indeed, as the captain of the winning team, Shah deserves credit for turning the party into an election-winning machine. BJP won Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, Assam, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, and Arunachal Pradesh under his helm.
Under his leadership, BJP, earlier considered as North-India party, spread its footprints in north-eastern states, West Bengal, Odisha, and southern states.
Shah was born in Mumbai in 1964 and was brought up at his paternal village in Maansa, Gujarat till the age of 16.
Before joining BJP in 1984-58, Shah worked for Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of RSS for some time. There, Shah was noted for his organizational skills and was appointed the national treasurer of Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha and subsequently the state secretary and state vice-president of the party in Gujarat.
During these years, Shah came in contact with Narendra Modi-then a rising star in the BJP. He and Narendra Modi, who was then an organizational secretary of the party in Gujarat, helped BJP mobilize its workers, which bore fruitful results for the BJP in subsequent elections.
However, challenges grew for Shahin 2010 when he was jailed in Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case. Later, a special CBI court dismissed the case.
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]