Former minister Amit Shah,a close aide of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi,who is an accused in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh encounter case,may be appointed as a national general secretary of the BJP after a crucial party meeting next week in Delhi,sources here said. He spent time in jail for his alleged role in the case. It is certain Shah will be inducted as a national general secretary of BJP. This is reason why the Chief Minister Narendra Modi has not inducted him in the ministry in Gujarat, said former deputy chief minister Narhari Amin who left Congress to join BJP just before the Assembly elections. Elevation of Shah is a matter of when,not if, he said. Profile: Amit Shah,former MOS (Home) The CBI has named him as the mastermind behind the abduction and fake encounters of alleged terrorist Sohrabuddin Sheikh,his wife Kauser Bi and accomplice Tulsiram Prajapati. Shah has in the past managed several of L K Advani's election campaigns from the Gandhinagar (Lok Sabha constituency). He was then appointed Chairman of The Gujarat State Finance Corporation Limited,the youngest person in this post. He was later appointed chairman of the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank. In 2003,after the BJP won a second term,Narendra Modi inducted Shah as the youngest minister in the cabinet,and gave him an unprecedented ten portfolios. This included the Home ministry,which looks after the police apparatus in the state. He quickly emerged as Modis right-hand man in the new party. Separate trials: SC reserves verdict on Amit Shahs plea (ENS: 2013-03-07) The Supreme Court reserved its verdict on a plea by former minister Amit Shah against CBIs attempt to make him stand trial separately into the killings of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati in alleged fake encounters. Shahs counsel Mahesh Jethmalani has claimed that CBI,with sinister design and malafide, has filed separate chargesheets in the two cases. He has argued that CBI had secured investigation in the Prajapati case only in order to explore a larger conspiracy in the Sohrabuddin case. CBI,Jethmalani has said,admitted this position in their affidavits too that Prajapatis killing was inter-connected and integral part of the conspiracy hatched as a part of the same transaction. CBI s stand is a malafide design to seek police custody of Shah a second time. Filing of separate chargesheets,which they have admitted to be part of the same transaction,leads to abuse of the process of law, Jethmalani has submitted before a Bench led by Justice P Sathasivam. He has contended that Shah was not asking for quashing of the FIR or the chargesheet but wanted that the chargesheet in Prajapati case must be considered as a supplementary chargesheet in the Sohrabuddin case. However,CBI has defended its action,saying they were not parts of the same conspiracy. Additional Solicitor General H P Raval told the court that there were two distinct conspiracies; one to kill Sohrabddin and his wife Kausar Bi in a fake encounter in November 2005 and the second to murder Prajapati in 2006. The two incidents are separate and distinct. Prajapati was used to entrap Sohrabuddin and his role ended after the latter was trapped. The first conspiracy related to killing of Sohrabuddin and Kausar Bi and a separate conspiracy was later hatched to eliminate Prajapati when the incident of the first killing had already come to light, said Raval. He contended that in view of the separate conspiracies,there was no question of treating the investigation into Prajapati case as further investigation in Sohrabuddin matter or the second chargesheet as a supplementary chargesheet in the first case.
