Author: Bhumika Gurjar, Department of Law, Prestige Institute of Management and Research
Background:
Amit Anil Chandra Shah was born in Mumbai on October 22, 1964.He descended from a Gujarati Hindu family of the Baniya caste.His great-grandfather was the Nagarseth (Capital City Chief) of the tiny state of Mansa. His father, Mansa-based industrialist Anil Chandra Shah, ran a profitable PVC pipe business.
He attended school in Mehsana before moving to Ahmedabad to pursue biochemistry at CU Shah Science College. He earned a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Biochemistry before joining his father’s business. He also worked as a stockbroker and for co-operative banks in Ahmedabad.
Shah has been associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) since he was a child, when he attended neighbourhood shakhas (branches). He formally joined the RSS as a swayamsevak (volunteer) while attending college in Ahmedabad. He initially met Narendra Modi in 1982 through the Ahmedabad RSS. At the time, Modi was an RSS pracharak (propagator), in charge of the city’s youth operations.
Amit Anil Chandra Shah is an Indian politician who has been serving as the 32nd Minister of Home Affairs since May 2019 and the first Minister of Cooperation from July 2021. He is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Gandhinagar. He was the 10th President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from 2014 until 2020. He has also been head of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) since 2014. From 2017 to 2019, he was elected to the upper chamber of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, representing Gujarat.
He is the BJP’s chief strategist and Narendra Modi’s close aide. He also served as a member of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly from Naranpura from 2012 to 2017 and Sarkhej from 1997 to 2012, as well as Minister of State for Home, Law and Justice, Prison, Border Security, Civil Defence, Excise, Home Guards, Transport, Prohibition, Gramme Rakshak Dal, Police Housing, Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs, Government of Gujarat in the Modi ministry from 2002 to 2012. During his undergraduate years, Shah was a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the RSS’s student branch. He joined the BJP in 1987 after obtaining a seat in the ABVP when he was 18.
Into politics:
Shah began his political career in 1982 by joining the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu volunteer movement. Soon after, he met Narendra Modi, who was then a pracharak (propagator) in the RSS. Modi reportedly advised him to join the RSS’s student arm, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).Soon after, Shah joined the ABVP in 1983.Later, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1987, one year before Modi did. In 1987, he became a Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) activist. He gradually progressed in the BJYM hierarchy, holding positions such as ward secretary, taluka secretary, state secretary, vice-president, and general secretary. He rose to prominence as Lal Krishna Advani’s election campaign manager in Gandhinagar during the 1991 Lok Sabha elections, where he demonstrated his management abilities.
In 1995, the BJP formed its first Gujarat government, with Keshubhai Patel as Chief Minister. At the time, the Indian National Congress, the BJP’s major adversary, wielded significant power in rural Gujarat. Modi and Shah collaborated to eradicate Congress in rural areas. Their objective was to find the second-most powerful leader in each hamlet and persuade them to join the BJP. They established a network of 8,000 influential rural leaders who had lost elections for pradhan (village chief) positions in various communities.
Sohrabuddin case
In 2010, Shah was suspected of orchestrating the extrajudicial killings of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife Kauser Bi, and his criminal partner Tulsiram Prajapati. According to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Sheikh was pestering several marble businessmen in Rajasthan by seeking protection money. The CBI stated that two of these marble businessmen hired Shah to kill Sheikh, along with police officers DIG D.G. Vanzara and SP Rajkumar Pandian.
The CBI presented phone call records indicating that Shah had communicated with the accused police personnel while the victims were in their custody. It also showed videotapes showing the Patel brothers speaking with two of Shah’s acquaintances at the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB). The Patel brothers, who had multiple criminal charges against them, also spoke out against Shah.
Shah denied the allegations against him as politically motivated. He noted that during his stint as Home Minister, Gujarat had one of the lowest rates of police encounters in the country. He added that he communicated with the police officers over the phone as part of his routine duties as Home Minister. He accused the Congress of exploiting the CBI, claiming that only cases in Gujarat were being investigated while the rest of the country had seen approximately 1,500 encounters over the same time period.
He stated that if the CBI had substantial evidence against him, it might have filed charges against him. In 2010, Police Commissioner Geetha Johri, who conducted the first investigation, stated that the CBI was pressuring her to falsely incriminate Shah in the Sohrabuddin case.
D.G. Vanzara was also charged in the Ishrat Jahan case, however the CBI did not charge Shah.
Shah was detained on July 25, 2010, in connection with the Sohrabuddin case. Shah was formerly considered a leading candidate for Gujarat Chief Minister. The arrest, however, had a negative impact on his political career; many Gujarat government figures distanced themselves from him. His other ministers regarded him as an autocratic figure who had poor working relationships.
When Shah petitioned for bail, the CBI expressed fear that he might use his political power to prevent justice from being served. On October 29, 2010, three months after his arrest, the Gujarat High Court granted him bail. However, the following day, when the courts were closed, Justice Aftab Alam filed a petition at his home to prevent him from entering Gujarat. Shah was therefore forcibly expelled from the state between 2010 and 2012. He and his wife relocated to a room at Gujarat Bhavan in Delhi. Later, the Supreme Court denied him bail on a CBI petition. In September 2012, the Supreme Court granted him bail and permitted him to return to Gujarat. He then stood in the 2012 Assembly election for the Naranpura constituency and won.(After delimitation, the Sarkhej constituency ceased to exist.) A special CBI court effectively released Shah from the Sohrabuddin case in 2014, citing a lack of proof and political undertones to the accusations made.
Snoopgate :
Shah was accused in 2013 of ordering unlawful surveillance on a lady in 2009 while serving as home minister. The investigative websites Cobrapost and Gulail published a series of taped audio talks between Shah and police officer GL Singhal. The tapes were given to the CBI in the Ishrat Jahan case and then leaked to these websites. The calls describe how the state machinery was utilised to monitor the woman and IAS official Pradeep Sharma (who has been suspended by the Gujarat government). In the tapes, Singhal and Shah regularly refer to a higher authority as Saheb, which is thought to be Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Shah refuted all of the accusations levelled against him, describing them as political propaganda spread by his opponents. The BJP’s political opponents urged an investigation into the Snoopgate scandal. However, in May 2014, the woman petitioned the Supreme Court, claiming that the monitoring on her was based on a “personal request” and thanking the Gujarat government for securing her safety. She asked the court to stop any probe, claiming it would invade her privacy.
Ministry of Home Affairs:
Article 370
Shah took oath as Cabinet Minister on May 30, 2019, and became Minister of Home Affairs on June 1, 2019. On August 5, 2019, Shah moved a resolution in the Rajya Sabha to repeal Article 370 and partition the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two, with Jammu and Kashmir acting as one of the union territories and Ladakh functioning as a separate union territory.
In September 2019, Shah discussed how India requires a single unifying language; he stated that Hindi should be spoken to unite the country and represent India around the world. In a tweet, he also encouraged Indians to utilise Hindi more often.
On March 27, 2024, Amit Shah announced that the central government would consider removing the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in Jammu and Kashmir.
NRC and CAA
On 19 November 2019, Shah declared in the Rajya Sabha of the Indian parliament that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) would be implemented throughout the country.
In December 2019, he introduced the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, which offers Indian citizenship to religiously persecuted minority communities who arrived in the nation before 2015 from Muslim-majority countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. In Northeast India, the Act sparked worries about the impact of immigration on local culture and politics, prompting protests. Similarly, opposition parties attacked the Act’s exclusion of Muslims as harmful to India’s plurality. Shah claimed that the bill was not anti-Muslim because it did not alter the established path to citizenship.
Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill 2022
The bill intends to replace the Identification of Prisoners Act of 1920. The legislation Commission of India’s 87th report in the 1980s suggested considerable revisions to existing legislation. The new measure will empower police and prison officials to collect, store, and analyse physical and biological samples from convicts and those detained on various counts, including retina and iris scans. While moving the bill through the Lok Sabha, Shah stated that “The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill, 2022, will not only fill those obsolete gaps, but it will also broaden the scope of evidence for conviction.” Later the bill was identified as new IPC, CRPC and Evidence act.
Conclusion :
In July 2014, the BJP’s central parliamentary board unanimously backed Shah’s appointment as party president.On January 24, 2016, he was unanimously re-elected as party president. After becoming the party’s president, Shah launched an intensive membership drive, and by March 2015, the BJP had 100 million members.
From 2014 to 2016, the BJP won Legislative Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, and Assam, but lost in Delhi and Bihar.
Shah also oversaw campaigning in the 2017 assembly elections, which led to the party’s victory in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
Shah’s influence in the BJP expanded after Modi became the party’s prime ministerial candidate. They have been accused of undermining other BJP leaders, including Lal Krishna Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Murli Manohar Joshi, and Jaswant Singh. By this point, Shah had established himself as an exceptional political campaign manager, earning the nickname “modern-day Chanakya and master strategist”. Shah was nominated BJP general secretary and handed control of Uttar Pradesh (UP). He was chosen by Rajnath Singh rather than Modi, who was impressed by Shah’s ability to seize control of different Congress-controlled organisations in Gujarat. Many party members reacted negatively to the decision, viewing him as a liability due to the criminal allegations against him. Political observers like Shekhar Gupta described the choice as a folly.
FAQS:
Who is Home Minister Amit Shah?
Home Minister Amit Shah is a polarising figure, often called India’s second most powerful man. He’s been central to the rise of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Here’s what you need to know about him. Amit Shah was born on 22 October 1964 in Mansa, a town in Gujarat state. His father was a small businessman and his mother a housewife.
Who is in the family of Amit Shah?
Shah is married to Sonal Shah and the couple have a son named Jay. Shah’s mother died from an illness on 8 June 2010. People close to Shah have described him as someone who does not like to socialise much.
