A master strategist who increased BJP’s footprint
NEW DELHI: To a party colleague’s question on why he prefers quick decision making over longdrawn-out deliberations, Amit Shah is learnt to have said, “If I don’t take quick decisions then I won’t get things done...My style is to work on instinct, take quick decisions then work hard to prove the decision right.”
As he steps down as the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Shah’s tenure is marked by many such decisions. Many worked, resulting in him being hailed as a master strategist; some didn’t, resulting in the party facing criticism. Still, it can’t be denied that it was under Shah’s watch that the party expanded, in terms of the number of members, national footprint, and its strength in Parliament.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledged as much on Monday when JP Nadda took over as party president from Shah in a planned move. “I do not think words can do justice to the rich contribution of @AmitShah Ji as @BJP4India President. During his presidency, BJP got opportunities to serve in several parts of India. We also got our highest ever tally in a Parliamentary election. He is an outstanding Karyakarta,” the PM tweeted.
Shah was first appointed as the party president in 2014, when the then party chief, Rajnath Singh, was elevated as the Union home minister following the BJP’s success in the Lok Sabha elections. That performance was predicated around the party almost sweeping Uttar Pradesh, which sends the most representatives to Parliament. Shah had overseen the campaign in the state.
That appointment was for the rest of Singh’s term and Shah was given charge as the president for a full term on January 24, 2016.
That stint came soon after the party lost elections in Bihar and Delhi and amid murmurs that its golden run could be on the wane.
“That is when he decided to go back to the grassroots…he emphasised that the party will have to revive the cadre, go back to its strength of presence at the booth level and borrow from the Sangh’s (RSS) door-to-door outreach,” said a party colleague who asked not to be named.
The result was an ambitious membership drive that took the number of members from a little over 20 million to nearly 100 million by 2019. And the result was an emphasis on winning everything from Panchayat to Parliament.The party scripted electoral successes in states such as Assam, where it won for the first time (which gave it a foothold in the Northeast). It subsequently formed governments in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya. It persuaded the ruling parties in Sikkim and Mizoram to join the North East Democratic Alliance led by the BJP.
“There was apprehension among the minorities in the Northeast that BJP would appropriate their culture and lifestyle and impose hardline Hindutva. But the party has been able to reach out to minorities as well,” said a BJP leader from the North East who asked not to be named.
There was much talk about Shah’s unorthodox choices, which saw a person from the Other Backward Classes being appointed party president in UP (between 2016 and 2017); a nonMaratha being appointed chief minister in Maharashtra; and even an alliance with an ideological opponent, the PDP, to form the government in Jammu and Kashmir. All this was justified as a means of strengthening the party and winning polls.
Bhupinder Yadav, a party general secretary and a Rajya Sabha MP, also a confidant of Shah, said that during the latter’s tenure “the party undertook the biggest ever membership drive, owing to which it now has over 100 million members, which is the highest for any party in the world; the party also saw a geographical expansion under his charge from the north-east of India to the south.”
The party also set up offices in every district making clear its ambitions of building a pan-India presence. “…In terms of organisational strength, he took major steps,” said Yadav.
A BJP member from the south, where the BJP has not been as successful, recalled how Shah insisted on daily reporting from the states. “He led the campaign in Kerala against the Left. He has been pushing the cadre to carve their space in the political scene dominated by regional parties.”
Shah’s tenure also saw the BJP becoming the second most powerful party in West Bengal. The party won 18 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 and now has its eyes set on the 2021 state elections.
In their book on Shah, Anirban Ganguly and Shiwanand Dwivedi detail the mass contact programmes popularised by Shah. “…In his quest for expanding BJP’s footprint, Shah covered more than 7,90,000 km between August 2014 and September 2018 undertaking major outreach programmes...”
Ideologically, Shah, who has never hidden his RSS roots, is credited for striking a balance between the ideological demands of the Sangh and political compulsions. A senior RSS functionary said that Shah remains committed to the Sangh’s larger ideology and was instrumental in fulfilling a long-pending dream of nullifying Article 370.
Vijay Chauthaiwale, who was roped in to head the BJP’s Overseas Cell by Shah, said there is more to Shah than just his abilities as an electoral strategist. “He also has a good understanding of history, culture, India’s heritage and his interests are diverse.”
Some have criticised Shah and Modi for seeking to centralise leadership and say this may be responsible for losses in some states. Political analyst, Neelanjan Sarkar, sees the centralisation as a bid to retain complete control and prevent factionalism.
“There has been a sidelining of many senior leaders. What they have also done at the state levels is prop up relatively unknown faces as CMs because they don’t want any factionalism. This is something that Indira Gandhi would have done in the 1970s. So in order to prevent factionalism at the central level they have made sacrifices at the state level,” he said.