Two months after steering the BJP to a colossal electoral victory in Uttar Pradesh—key to their majority in the Lok Sabha—Narendra Modi’s close confidante, Amit Shah, was appointed BJP president today, succeeding Rajnath Singh who held the post for the past two years. Shah’s career has always been closely linked to that of Modi’s, though he largely worked in the shadows while Modi grew increasingly prominent. His appointment as BJP president suggests that Modi, through Shah, now controls both the government and the party they belong to.
In this extract from ‘The Organiser’ in The Caravan’s April 2014 issue, Poornima Joshi tracks several troubling incidents to which Amit Shah’s name has been linked.
Narendra Modi was appointed the chief minister of Gujarat in October 2001. Over the course of the following years, he and Amit Shah worked to sideline their political rivals. Any leader with the slightest potential to challenge Modi was either shunted or otherwise fell out of Modi’s way.
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