BJP president Amit Shah has said his party will have to devise a strategy of “51% politics” to defeat rival electoral forces, including the Congress, that have joined hands despite serious ideological and policy differences.
n the past it used to be the Congress versus all or Indira (Gandhi) versus all. Now it is the BJP versus all or Narendra Modi versus all, said Amit Shah. (PTI Photo)
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Speaking to Hindustan Times in an exclusive interview after his appointment as party president for the second time on January 24, Shah said the central point of politics has changed from the Congress to BJP. “In the past it used to be the Congress versus all or Indira (Gandhi) versus all. Now it is the BJP versus all or Narendra Modi versus all. Our adversaries have joined hands for their own survival. And as elections are a numbers game in the end, the BJP must come up with a political strategy of 51% to defeat these forces. I see this as a plus for the strength of the BJP,” he said.
Shah will have a second term co-terminus with Modi’s term as Prime Minister till 2019.
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While Shah admitted the forthcoming elections in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala posed a formidable challenge to the BJP, he was convinced the party would break all past electoral records and have a hand in government formation, particularly in Assam.
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While Shah admitted the forthcoming elections in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala posed a formidable challenge to the BJP, he was convinced the party would break all past electoral records and have a hand in government formation, particularly in Assam.
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“We won four out of six elections in the past 16 months without losing our support base even in Bihar and Delhi. The party is in expansion mode in the states going to polls in the coming months. Yet, I am convinced the party will do well in the elections,” he said, adding that the real test would be in 2017 when states where the BJP has big stakes would go to the polls.
Shah said he was planning to undertake a party reorganisation in the coming days after consultations with senior leaders.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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