How Amit Shah generated ‘TsuNaMo’
The perceived architect of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second consecutive win, Amit Shah, generated the much talkedabout pro-incumbency wave with the help of eight of his close aides who worked in tandem with the BJP Presidents office without break for almost two years. Many of his aides, seldom seen in the media, worked as backroom boys from the BJPs new multistoreyed headquarters located in central Delhi.
Shah took the tough decision of replacing 120 sitting party MPs with new faces. At booth-level, Shah reconstituted teams of at least 20 members per booth involving almost 18 million supporters. To popularise the schemes of the Modi government, Shah also set up 161 call centres across the country. While Shah’s team was given a free hand to execute his orders, most of the work was also monitored by the Prime Minister’s personal staff. The check-and-balance policy finally worked for the party.
Amit Shah’s confidante and national general secretary Anil Jain was an important player in the BJP’s ‘300-plus’ plan for Lok Sabha polls 2019. Jain, also a Rajya Sabha MP, was given the most crucial charge of reviving the party in Chhattisgarh which was wiped out by the Congress in the Assembly elections last year.
Jain was also tasked to ensure a sweep in Haryana which had been led by a non-Jat Chief Minister M.L. Khattar. Sources said that Anil Jain suggested to Shah that most of the sitting MPs be replaced. In Chhattisgarh, the BJP Parliamentary Board acted on Jain’s advice and changed the candidates, which led to the party’s unexpected big win despite registering a heavy loss in the Assembly polls recently.
Despite the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party’s alliance based on caste equations, the BJP picked up more than 60 seats from Uttar Pradesh, almost sounding the death knell for parties winning polls purely on caste arithmetic. In unpredictable Uttar Pradesh, BJP’s General Secretary Sunil Bansal, a trusted lieutenant of Shah, crafted an unexpectedly big victory for the party.
Demolishing Mamata Banerjee’s army in Bengal with carpet bombing seemed to be Shah’s one-point agenda in this Lok Sabha election. Veteran Madhya Pradesh leader Kailash Vijayvargiya performed the task. He boosted the RSS cadre in each district of Bengal. To aggressively confront the local political thugs, central security was provided to key RSS and BJP office-bearers who were also being harassed by the state machinery.
One man who really created the difference in the party’s outstanding performance was Bhupendra Singh Yadav, the national vice president of BJP. Yadav, who is close to Modi as well as Shah, was tasked with coordinating rallies of the top leadership. Yadav effectively coordinated with Modi’s personal staff in selecting venues and finalising places for important public meetings and roadshows for Shah.