Decoding Amit Shah, the relentless man behind Modi's victory march
When Amit Shah took over as BJP chief in 2014, the party was still in a celebratory mood over its victory in the Lok Sabha elections. But the man who played a key role by delivering 73 of the 80 seats in UP for the party, and was adjudged “man of the match” by Narendra Modi, was in no mood to pause.
Even as he harvested Modi’s popularity to lead the party to victories in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, Shah had already set his sights on the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. He calculated that BJP might find it difficult to repeat its performance in the vast swathes of north, west and central India and, therefore, needed to focus elsewhere to compensate for any dip in tallies in its strongholds.
On Thursday that worry did not come to pass but the safety net Shah had stitched held the party in good stead. He had chosen to focus on the 120 seats the party had lost despite 2014’s Modi wave. The constituencies were divided into 25 clusters and each placed under a senior party leader. BJP then decided to concentrate on 80 of them; on results day, the party appeared to be heading to net at least half of them, with Shah’s resolve the main driver.
That is Amit Shah for you. An intense Hindu nationalist, he combines his belief in India being a potential world beater with the conviction that no goal is hard to achieve when pursued with devotion. He set one such goal for himself when he said the party needed to expand and make gains in inhospitable terrain, setting the stage for “Operation Coromandel” which saw BJP making impressive gains in West Bengal, Odisha and Telangana, and coming close to breaking through the resistance in Kerala.
Success did not come on a platter. Shah, a diabetic on insulin thrice a day, visited Mamata Banerjee’s fortress 84 times as party president. He also conceived the North East Democratic Alliance as part of an outreach that saw the party emerge as the predominant national party in the region and fetch a record number of seats in this election.
But the focus on “new lands” did not come at the cost of neglecting established redoubts. In UP, in particular, Shah refused to be fazed by the coming together of SP and BSP and managed to rally his troops with his call for “politics of 50% vote” to help the cadre overcome the demoralisation that had set in after Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati combined to inflict embarrassments in the byelections to Gorakhpur and Phoolpur LS seats. Shah was a realist with regard to its sulking ally, Shiv Sena, or patching up with Nitish Kumar (JD-U); the two calls, both pragmatic, yielded good returns.
The BJP chief was helped by what he calls Modi’s “immense” popularity. But he also realised that toil would be needed. Accordingly, 161 call centres were set up across the country to turn the goodwill of beneficiaries of central schemes into votes. It managed to reach an overwhelming majority of the 24.71 crore beneficiaries. The vote bank so earned was a big factor in Modi’s win on Thursday.
Even as he harvested Modi’s popularity to lead the party to victories in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, Shah had already set his sights on the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. He calculated that BJP might find it difficult to repeat its performance in the vast swathes of north, west and central India and, therefore, needed to focus elsewhere to compensate for any dip in tallies in its strongholds.
On Thursday that worry did not come to pass but the safety net Shah had stitched held the party in good stead. He had chosen to focus on the 120 seats the party had lost despite 2014’s Modi wave. The constituencies were divided into 25 clusters and each placed under a senior party leader. BJP then decided to concentrate on 80 of them; on results day, the party appeared to be heading to net at least half of them, with Shah’s resolve the main driver.
That is Amit Shah for you. An intense Hindu nationalist, he combines his belief in India being a potential world beater with the conviction that no goal is hard to achieve when pursued with devotion. He set one such goal for himself when he said the party needed to expand and make gains in inhospitable terrain, setting the stage for “Operation Coromandel” which saw BJP making impressive gains in West Bengal, Odisha and Telangana, and coming close to breaking through the resistance in Kerala.
Success did not come on a platter. Shah, a diabetic on insulin thrice a day, visited Mamata Banerjee’s fortress 84 times as party president. He also conceived the North East Democratic Alliance as part of an outreach that saw the party emerge as the predominant national party in the region and fetch a record number of seats in this election.
But the focus on “new lands” did not come at the cost of neglecting established redoubts. In UP, in particular, Shah refused to be fazed by the coming together of SP and BSP and managed to rally his troops with his call for “politics of 50% vote” to help the cadre overcome the demoralisation that had set in after Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati combined to inflict embarrassments in the byelections to Gorakhpur and Phoolpur LS seats. Shah was a realist with regard to its sulking ally, Shiv Sena, or patching up with Nitish Kumar (JD-U); the two calls, both pragmatic, yielded good returns.
The BJP chief was helped by what he calls Modi’s “immense” popularity. But he also realised that toil would be needed. Accordingly, 161 call centres were set up across the country to turn the goodwill of beneficiaries of central schemes into votes. It managed to reach an overwhelming majority of the 24.71 crore beneficiaries. The vote bank so earned was a big factor in Modi’s win on Thursday.
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