Amit Shah
Amit Anil Chandra Shah (born 22 October 1964) is an Indian politician who is currently serving as the 32nd Home Minister and the 2nd Minister of Co-operation since June 2024. Shah previously held the same portfolios during the second Modi ministry (2019 - 2024). 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.
For other people with the same name, see Amit Shah (disambiguation).
Amit Shah
office established
744,716 (56.34%)
office established
office abolished
Home, Law and Justice, Prison, Border Security, Civil Defence, Excise, Home Guards, Transport, Prohibition, Gram Rakshak Dal, Police Housing, Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs
Jay Shah (son)
A chief strategist of the BJP, he is a close aide to Narendra Modi.[2][3] He was also the member of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly from Naranpura from 2012 to 2017 and Sarkhej from 1997 to 2012 and the Minister of State for Home, Law and Justice, Prison, Border Security, Civil Defence, 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). 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.[4] 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, Uttarakhand, Gujarat[5] and Manipur, but the Akali-BJP alliance lost power in the larger Punjab election.[6] 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 leadership.[7]
Early life
Amit Anil Chandra Shah[8] was born in Mumbai on 22 October 1964.[9] He came from a Gujarati Hindu family of the Baniya caste.[10][11][12] His great grandfather was the Nagarseth (Capital city chief) of the small state of Mansa.[13] His father, Anil Chandra Shah, a businessman from Mansa, owned a successful PVC pipe business.[14]
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.[14] He also worked as a stockbroker and in co-operative banks in Ahmedabad.[15]
Shah was involved with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) 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.[10] He first met Narendra Modi in 1982 through the Ahmedabad RSS circles.[10] At that time, Modi was an RSS pracharak (propagator), working as in-charge of youth activities in the city.[14]
Early political career
Entry into politics
Shah started his political career in 1982 after joining the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu volunteer organisation. Soon after, he got acquainted with Narendra Modi, a pracharak (propagator) of the RSS at that time. Reportedly, he was adviced by Modi to join the student wing of the RSS, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).[16] Soon after Shah joined the ABVP in the year 1983.[10][17] Later on, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1987, one year before Modi joined the party.[14] 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.[10] 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.[1][18]
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.[10]
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, Gaderias 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.[10] Shah also ensured that 11 of the bank's 22 directors were BJP loyalists.[14]
Modi and Shah also sought to reduce Congress' hold over sports bodies in the state.[10] Shah served as the president of the Gujarat State Chess Association.[17] In 2009, he became the vice-president of the profitable Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA), while Modi served as its president.[14] 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 that finances small and medium-scale enterprises. After Shankersinh Vaghela and some other leaders complained about Modi's growing popularity 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 confidante in Gujarat.[14]
In 1997, Modi lobbied to get Shah a BJP ticket for the Gujarat Legislative Assembly by-election in Sarkhej.[19] Shah became an MLA in February 1997 after winning the by-election.[20] He retained his seat in the 1998 Assembly elections.[21]
Personal life
Shah is married to Sonal Shah and the couple have a son named Jay. Shah's mother died from an illness on 8 June 2010.[10][14] People close to Shah have described him as someone who does not like to socialise much.[77] He has six sisters, two of whom live in Chicago.[78][13] In September 2019, he was operated for lipoma at the backside of his neck.[79] On 2 August 2020, Shah tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted to the hospital.[80]