Amit Shah: India’S Second Most Influential Politician

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi's closest aide and Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah can be widely credited for the party’s spectacular electoral showing in Maharashtra and Haryana.

The BJP won 122 of 288 seats in Maharashtra. This more than doubles its seat count in the state, which is home to the financial hub of Mumbai, but falls short of an outright majority. It also doubles its vote share in the state.
 
In Haryana, the BJP won 47 of 90 seats, enough to rule alone. This is the first time that the BJP will be ruling Haryana.
 
After the results, Modi's campaign manager Amit Shah said: “There is still a Modi wave that is like a tsunami.”
 
"Today’s results give a seal of approval to the Modi government over the past four months, and prove that our country-folk recognise Modi as the undisputed leader of India."
 
But in this entire pandemonium one thing that was forgotten was Amit Shah's contribution to BJP's stellar performance in states where it had always played second fiddle to regional parties.
 
After being seen as the architect of the BJP's success in the Lok Sabha elections, especially in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, where the party cornered 71 of the 80 parliamentary seats, the bypoll results were a dampener and many were quick to write his epitaph, saying his earlier success was a flash in the pan.
 
The assembly poll results were crucial for BJP as these were the first major polls after the Lok Sabha elections and were being perceived as a vote on the performance of the five-month-old Narendra Modi government at the Centre. This was also the first round of assembly polls under party president Amit Shah.
 
The results have also vindicated the BJP's move of going it alone in the two states though the party has put the onus of break-up in the alliance on its former partners and cemented Shah's role as a sharp political strategist.
 
Shah, who worked with Narendra Modi in Gujarat almost anonymously and virtually became his silent shadow, planned the poll campaign meticulously including selection of candidates, reports the Indian Express.
 
It was Shah who decided to break alliances with regional parties – a gamble that even his well-wishers advised against after the showing in the bypolls but the dare paid off with the BJP becoming the only party since 1990 to win over 100 seats in Maharashtra and in Haryana, where the party had won 4 seats in 2009, now had the strength to rule alone.
 
According to The Times of India, it was Shah who told Kuldip Bishnoi of the Haryana Janhit Congress to settle for 25 seats and called off talks when the former ally demanded fifty-fifty split plus the chief minister's post.
 
A report in The Times of India says that Shah bluntly told Kuldip Bishnoi: 'Your demands are disproportionate to your strength as indicted during the LS elections.'
 
And in Maharashtra, The Economic Times reports that a close aide of Shah disclosed that the very first meeting between Shah and Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray showed how things would unfold. The source went on to say that Uddhav wanted to be treated like a senior partner; he could not digest the fact that the BJP wanted to contest in more seats.
 
The aide further told The Economic Times that with passage of time Shah began to feel that BJP would have a better chance if the party goes alone in Maharashtra. Shah view was that if the BJP contested 120 seats, it would win around 80 but if it contested all 288 seats then it would win around 130 seats.
 
The BJP's parliamentary board refused to break the alliance with the Shiv Sena but the breaking point was Sena’s stubbornness to concede more seats to the BJP.
 
Moves like these, with a ferocious commitment to BJP's victory, saw the party come out triumphant.
 
The Economic Times further reports that Shah would work frequently till 2 am during the Maharashtra campaign: Working frequently till 2 am, Shah had camped out at party headquarters in Dadar in Mumbai from September 22 to 29. He would catch a few hours of sleep every night at the Rang Sharda hotel nearby, where rooms are Rs 1,500 a night — not the kind where ruling party chiefs spend their nights in.
 
Shah literally controlled every aspect of BJP's campaign in Maharashtra as after the split the party had barely two weeks’ time to campaign on its own.
 
Special teams were created for the campaign as 700 seniors and more than 4,000 party workers from all across India were sent to Maharashtra with the pitch that they were to ignore Sena jibes and to emphasise 'the greatness of Bal Thackeray and tell voters that BJP was a better inheritor of his legacy', The Economic Times reports.
 
In Haryana, BJP senior leader Sushma Swaraj had strongly advocated an alliance with Bishnoi but according to a party senior, Shah had not met the Haryana Janhit Congress even after he sought a meeting with him.
 
A Shah aide told The Economic Times: 'Shah had made up his mind about Haryana as well. He did not agree with the Akali suggestion of allying with INLD either.'
 
The party assiduously worked to live up to the challenge with Modi leading the campaign and Shah ensuring a wide grassroots connect and effective booth management, party leaders said.
 
All this with the Modi charisma and his message of good governance resulted in a win that pushed the Congress further into a corner by outclassing the party in states that have been its strongholds.  
 
The twin successes of Haryana, where the will rule Haryana all alone, and Maharashtra, where it has emerged as the number one party, have cemented his place in the volatile political firmament of India as being one of the shrewdest minds and master organizers in the country.
 
This also makes him the influential politician in India, next only to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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