A year with Amit Shah: crores of members, J&K and still ‘Narendra Modi’s man’

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The tactician’s membership campaign has fetched the party a declared 11 crore recruits, which the BJP claims makes it the largest political party in the world.

“Now the party is on a mission of preparing these millions ideologically to build the BJP as a pan-Indian party and carry its message to every nook and corner, according to the plan prepared by Amit Shah,” said a BJP leader.

Among the party’s greatest achievements under Shah has been managing the once-unimaginable wedlock of two extreme ideologies in Jammu and Kashmir. It is Shah who is credited with having brought the BJP and the PDP together to rule the state without creating too many cracks in the BJP and RSS.

Besides sharing power in J&K, the party has gained electorally in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand and is now ruling in all three. However, in the Delhi elections, Shah’s electoral and political strategies failed miserably.

“It has been a very successful year for Amit Shah and the party. Being a leader who was seen as outsider, he came out of every situation — good and bad — with out-of-the-box solutions. If I give him 10/10, anyone, even Sitaram Yechury, would give him 5/10,” said Seshadri Chari, a BJP national executive member and a political analyst. Chari said Shah has not only managed excellent coordination between the government and the party — which is even better than during former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s tenure — but also avoided creating any controversy with public comments.

In byelections and local body polls, however, the BJP’s fortunes have been mixed. Although civic polls in Assam, Madhya Pradesh and by election results in Kerala and Tripura brought cheers to the BJP, those in some states proved that the BJP needs much more than Shah’s craftsmasnhip there.

Shah recently restructured the party setup, giving key responsibilities to his and Narendra Modi’s close aides and effecting a generational shift in the BJP. He has constituted new departments.

His style of functioning has involved focusing on the result rather than the process. Known to ignore conventional practices such as taking up issues at various structured party forums, Shah has upset many in the party with decisions that these leaders have been kept out of.

Amid complaints that he is inaccessible, Shah has introduced regular interactions at the party headquarters but his rivals within the party continue to talk about his “arrogance”.

According to a BJP leader, Shah is not a team player. His decision to dissolve party cells for different sections of the society, with which 2,000 to 3,000 leaders were engaged, has not gone well within the second and third rungs of party leaders. “Besides, under Shah, there is a gap between the party and the opinion makers, which usually results in creating a misunderstanding or a wrong perception about the party and the government,” a source said.

His critics also accuse him of systematic use of communal polarisation, the alleged thrust of his electioneering, particularly in Uttar Pradesh where the party and its ally managed over 70 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats, or in Haryana where the party won an impressive majority in the assembly. His opponents say he is set to use the same strategy in the high-stakes Bihar elections too, though Shah and the BJP dismiss this criticism as “lies spread by the opposition”.

Shah, who did not enjoy the support of the RSS like his predecessors had, has always been known as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Man Friday and it is a tag he hasn’t been able to shake off.  Although he has diligently managed the party, no one in the party sees him as a leader separated from Modi. “In fact he has been a watchdog for Modi in the party. While Modi is busy with the government, Shah manages the party in the way Modi wants,” said a BJP leader.

“His politics and ideology begin and end with Modi.”