E-Paper
Lok Sabha Election Results 2019:Decoding the role BJP chief Amit Shah played in PM Modi’s epic victory
A political fighter to the core, Amit Shah had requested the BJP election committee to allow him to fight from Amethi against Rahul Gandhi.
Amit Shah had planned to land up at the Gandhinagar returning officer to file his nomination with all of 11 supporters. But then, he got a phone call from Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal. The 91-year-old leader advised Amit Shah to get all NDA allies to join him for a show of strength before filing his papers on March 30. The 54-year-old BJP president was reluctant to make his nomination into such a big deal or broach the topic with anyone. But Parkash Badal prevailed on Shah, called up PM Modi and got a whole rally-cum-road show organised for Amit Shah with Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in tow.
Click here for Latest Election Results 2019 India highlights
Clearly reading the political signs, Badal insisted on speaking first at the rally and set the agenda for the ascendency of Shah as the leader in the BJP pantheon. The run-away victory in 2019 elections has just underscored the point. Amit Shah has arrived.
A political fighter to the core, Shah had requested the BJP election committee to allow him to fight from Amethi against Congress President Rahul Gandhi even as he promised to give him a tough fight. However, former party president and Home Minister Rajnath Singh prevailed upon him to fight from safer confines of Gandhinagar so that he could spare time to consolidate the party’s best seats.
WATCH: Watch: How Modi-Shah’s ‘Jodi No 1’ scripted historic Lok Sabha 2019 mandate
Click here for Lok Sabha Election Results LIVE
Shah’s biggest strength is his political astuteness combined with humungous reserves of energy, which are second only to PM Modi.
As an example of how his day looked like in the run up to the national election, Shah participated in an unusual Kolkata road show at 6 pm on May 14. He then addressed a meeting of intellectuals in Rajarhat at 8.30 pm amidst a slew of interviews, boarded a charter flight to Varanasi at midnight, held a meeting with Railway Minister Piyush Goyal at Amethi House in Kashi and then returned to Delhi by 6 am. He held a press conference on the Kolkata roadshow violence at 10 am and then went back to Uttar Pradesh for his usual five-rallies-a-day schedule.
On his way to Chandigarh about 10 days earlier, Shah had in an informal interaction with Hindustan Times said that some in his party may think of him to be off his mind but he expected the BJP to win around 23 seats in West Bengal and around 63 seats in Uttar Pradesh. While many armchair strategists thought the BSP-SP will overcome the BJP in UP and the Trinamool will comfortably retain Bengal, Shah obviously had other plans. Clearly, his predictions are not far off the mark.
After the 2014 win, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah knew that they had to win over eastern India to balance any losses from north and west of India in 2019 as the BJP held optimum seats in these parts. Shah also focused on Uttar Pradesh.
When the October 2, 2014 Burdwan blasts exposed the TMC to allegations of links to the Bangladesh-based Jamait-ul-Mujahideen (JMB), it provided Shah with an opportunity which he utilized to the optimum. Shah had told Hindustan Times back in January 2015 that the BJP’s time had come in Bengal because of corruption by the TMC leaders and the worsening internal security situation in the state.
Just as Shah discovered Himanta Biswa Sarma as the leader of the BJP in the North-East, he pushed strongman Kailash Vijayvargia and the suave Sidharth Nath Singh as BJP faces in West Bengal. After Singh became a minister in the Yogi Adityanath government in UP, Shah put his best poll teams into action with Sarma being brought in from Assam and other teams from Gujarat. Although the intellectual face of the BJP was led by Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta and Anirban Ganguly, Shah knew that he had to take on mercurial Mamata Banerjee on the Trinamool’s terms and stake claim. The strategy worked with West Bengal chief minister taking the BJP bait to the full and ending up alienating large sections of rural and urban Bengal.
Even though Shah focused on eastern India, Uttar Pradesh remained his principal focus as he knew that the state was critical to BJP victory. For anyone sitting at Lal Bahadur Shastri airport in Varanasi, this was quite evident as a Club one Falcon Charter jet used by Shah was seen going up and down the runway at all hours. Three helicopters and a 737-200 Air Force jet carrying PM Modi were on a similar routine. Today, the BSP-SP grand alliance has been cut to size with the BJP crossing the 50 mark in Uttar Pradesh alone. The BJP has made serious inroads into Bengal and now the target will be the 2021 Assembly elections.
When Modi filed his nomination from Varanasi on April 26, the senior Badal told Shah that the prime minister should not be casual about Kashi and leave the constituency to his voters. He suggested that PM Modi should address another rally in Varanasi closer to the May 19 polls. Much as both Modi and Shah respect Badal senior, it wasn’t a suggestion that PM Modi eventually accepted. He left the Varanasi election to Shah and his women supporters.
