Amit Shah

Amit Shah

Amit Anilchandra Shah is an Indian politician currently serving as the Minister of Home Affairs. He served as the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party from 2014 to 2020. He was elected to the lower house of Parliament, Lok Sabha, in the 2019 Indian general elections. He is the chief strategist of the BJP and a close aide to Narendra Modi.

About Amit Shah in brief

Summary Amit ShahAmit Anilchandra Shah is an Indian politician currently serving as the Minister of Home Affairs. He served as the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party from 2014 to 2020. He was elected to the lower house of Parliament, Lok Sabha, in the 2019 Indian general elections from Gandhinagar. He is the chief strategist of the BJP and a close aide to Narendra Modi. Shah was first elected in Gujarat as the MLA for a seat partly covering Ahmedabad, Sarkhej in 1997. He continued to hold it in the 1998, 2002 and 2007 elections until the seat’s dissolution in 2008. He then got elected from the nearby Naranpura in 2012. As a close associate of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, he held executive portfolios in the Gujarat state government. Shah rose to national prominence and was appointed as the party’s national president in July 2014. He came from a Gujarati Hindu Vaishnava family, who were Baniyas. His great grandfather was the Nagarseth of the small state of Mansa. He went to school in Mehsana and moved to Ahmedabad to study biochemistry at CU Shah Science College. He graduated with a BSc degree in biochemistry and then worked for his father’s business. 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. He became known for his management skills when he was the election campaign manager for Lal Krishna Advani during the 1991 Lok Sabha elections.

In 1999, Shah was elected as the president of the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank, the biggest cooperative bank in India. He won 303 seats to get a majority in the 2015 Indian general election under Shah’s leadership. In 2017, he was partly credited with the party victories in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Manipur, but the Akali-BJP alliance lost power in the larger Punjab election. He has played an organizing and membership-promotional role in the elections of many states since 2014. In 1995, the BJP formed its government in Gujarat with Keshubhai Patel as Chief Minister. At that time, the Indian Congress, was highly influential in rural Gujarat, with the second-most influential leader in the state. Shah used the same strategy to reduce Congress’ influence over the state’s powerful co-operatives, which played an important role in Gujarat’s economy. He first met Narendra Modi in 1982 through the RSS circles, working as in-charge of youth activities in the city. He joined the BJP in 1987, one year before Modi joined the party. In 2000, he became an activist of BJP’s youth wing, Bharatiy Janata Yuva Morcha, in 1987. He also worked as a stockbroker and in co-operative banks in Ahmedabad. In 2009, he won the election to the Lok Sabha as a member of the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat in 2017.