Election results: PM Narendra Modi gives credit to Amit Shah for BJP’s ‘extraordinary win’

A large section of BJP leaders credited Shah for “identifying the problems” and addressing them in time to rescue the BJP from a defeat, which could have been “embarrassing and devastating” for the party. They pointed out that when a few surveys hinted at consistent growth in Congress’s acceptance among the voters, Shah had prompted the government to effect changes in GST rates.

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In order to avoid too much focus on economic issues, the party then went on to draw attention to emotional issues such as “Gujarati asmita”.

Known for his planning, organisational build-up and electioneering, Shah was constantly in touch with the party’s 50,125 booth committees through 9,542 shakti kendras across the state, sources said. Shah even cancelled the last leg of his campaign in Himachal Pradesh and stayed put in Gujarat throughout, they said.

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The BJP chief addressed 31 rallies and travelled 6,635 km between November 21 and December 11. Of Gujarat’s 40 districts, Shah had night stays in 26 districts, where he met booth workers and other party workers. He held dozens of meetings of panna pramukhs (party workers tasked with keeping in touch with a certain number of voters in each booth), sources said. They contended that caste polarisation triggered by the Congress campaign led to BJP’s defeat in several constituencies.

BJP chief Amit Shah with Union ministers Arun Jaitley and Ananth Kumar at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi on Monday. (Express Photo: Tashi Tobgyal)

Addressing the media, Shah also blamed the Congress’s “caste politics” for his party’s lowest tally in Gujarat since 1996, but cited the rise in vote-share and the sixth straight victory in the state to assert that the people had chosen the BJP’s “politics of performance”.

Citing his party’s winning streak since it came to power at the Centre in May 2014, Shah claimed that the BJP will win the 2019 Lok Sabha polls with a big majority, and that the people will help realise Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream of a “New India” by 2022.

Rejecting suggestions of a close fight in Gujarat, he said, “A gap of 8 per cent (in vote-share) does not imply a close fight.”

With the Congress claiming “moral victory” after putting up its strongest show in the saffron bastion since 1985, when the party had won 149 seats and formed a government, Shah accused it of “lowering the political discourse”, claiming this was the lowest form of campaign he had witnessed in his career. The twin verdicts — in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh — are a defeat of the “politics of dynasty, casteism and appeasement” and a win for his party’s politics of performance, he said.