After Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani's jodi, the Modi-Shah jodi created its own magic in Indian politics. In the 2014 and 2019 general elections, Amit Shah has been known as the BJP's Chanakya. Shah has been actively involved in the party's strategy planning and implementation. He is also known as a genius stock market investor.
During the Modi regime, no other politician was considered a taller figure in Indian politics than Shah after the PM himself. In the 2019 general elections, Amit Shah contested and won from Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency with a margin of over 5.5 lakh votes. He broke all records of LK Advani.
In 2010, Shah spent time in jail for the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case. He got conditional bail to stay away from Gujarat. Four years later, Shah became the national president of the BJP. He has had a meteoric rise in national politics. When Shah got bail from Sabarmati jail, he said, "Mari oat joi kinare ghar na bandhtta samundar chu pacho avish", which translates to- "I am leaving right now but don't underestimate me, I am going to come back again."
Since 1989, Amit Shah has fought 29 elections including various local body polls in which he has not lost any single one. Shah was elected as an MLA of Gujarat Sarkhej in four consecutive elections 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2007. At one time, he held 12 portfolios- home, law and justice, prison, border security, civil defence, excise, transport, prohibition, home guard, gram rakshak dal, police housing and legislative parliamentary affairs.
Known as master strategist, Shah along with Modi has assured the BJP's victory in several state elections. Under his leadership, the BJP achieved success in the legislative assemblies in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand and Assam in 2016. But the party lost elections in Delhi, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh. He led the BJP towards a landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and made a strong debut in Manipur.
Shah was born in 1964 to a wealthy Vaishnav family of Gujarat. His grandfather relocated his family to their ancestral home in Gujarat Mansa from Mumbai. He started his political work as a student leader and met PM Modi in 1986 in Ahmedabad.
