New Delhi: Over the past three months, Bharatiya Janata Party strategist Amit Shah has been travelling the length and breadth of the country, not only for his official work as Union home minister, but also to address political rallies to strengthen the party’s prospect in seats where its presence is weak.
He has also been meeting state party leaders to fine tune their strategies for upcoming assembly polls, panchayat polls, municipal polls and, of course, the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
In the month of April, before starting his campaign in Karnataka — where the BJP is fighting an aggressive Congress to retain its only southern state — Shah did not lose sight of other states that are crucial to Prime Minister Narendra Modi winning his third term.
In January, Shah visited 11 states under the BJP’s ongoing ‘Pravas Programme’ for weak Lok Sabha seats, including Tripura, Nagaland, Manipur, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab, and Haryana.
Similarly, in February and March, despite Parliament being in session, Shah visited eight states.
In April, he visited Bihar, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Assam.
Speaking to ThePrint, BJP general secretary Dushyant Kumar Gautam, said: “When Shah became party general secretary in 2013 and was made in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, he had set a target of winning more than 60 seats from the state. The party won 71. Then, as party president, he set a target of winning 300 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. We got 303. Now, he has two responsibilities — as home minister and of ensuring that the party gets more than 300 seats for PM Modi’s third term — with 2024 polls and several crucial assembly elections, like in Karnataka, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, approaching. He is going to have to keep making more time to work on strategy and filling gaps on ground.”
Another senior party leader, who spoke to ThePrint on condition of anonymity, said that Shah’s most notable strategy meetings in poll-bound states take place at night since, during the day, he attends rallies and roadshows. At night, he calls assembly in-charges and other leaders to his place to review seat arrangements, take feedback on the campaign, and make changes to strategies if necessary.
During the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, he held several regional meetings of leaders in Lucknow, Bareilly, and Varanasi to decentralise strategy making. He did the same in Gujarat. In Karnataka, he plans to camp in the state to oversee the campaign.
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In Bihar
On 20 April, Shah met Upendra Kushwaha, president of the Rastriya Lok Janata Dal (RLJD), and Sanjay Jaiswal, former BJP state president (Bihar). This was Shah’s first meeting with Kushwaha after the latter quit CM Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) in February this year. And though there’s no confirmation, media reports speculate that the leaders discussed the possibilities of an alliance for 2024 as the BJP is in search of a smaller party in the state to counter the broader alliance of the seven-party Mahagathbandhan.
A week earlier, on 13 April, Shah had also met Nitish Kumar’s ally and Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) leader Jitan Ram Manjhi.
Manjhi’s HAM, Kushwaha’s RJLD, Mukesh Sahani’s Vikassheel Insaan Party and Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party are crucial for the BJP to strengthen caste-based mobilisation for 2024 polls.
Shah had also visited Bihar on 2 April to address a rally in Nawada as part of the BJP’s ‘Pravas Programme’, the aim of which is to win 160 Lok Sabha seats where the party lost in 2019. It has invested significant resources to win back at least half of them.
Speaking in Nawada, Shah attacked Nitish government over the Ram Navami violence in Bihar, saying: “Give full majority to PM Modi in 2024 elections and elect a BJP government in 2025 state elections. Rioters will be hung upside down.”
In West Bengal
In the first week of April, he held a meeting with West Bengal BJP MPs during the parliament session. This meeting was held to discuss the party’s preparation for the upcoming panchayat polls in the state as well as the Lok Sabha polls. Bengal is a crucial state where the BJP has lost considerable ground after the assembly polls in 2021. During the meeting, Shah asked BJP MPs why there was a lack of aggression in the fight against CM Mamata Banerjee.
He also told state leaders to strengthen booth-level organisation ahead of the panchayat polls and target winning 35 seats from Bengal.
The BJP had won 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal in 2019. Retaining those seats will be a challenge for the party to maintain its total tally of 300 plus seats.
Later, on 14 April, addressing a rally in Birbhum, Shah said Mamata’s government would not survive in the next Assembly elections in 2025 if the BJP gets 35 seats in 2024. The statement created much controversy.
Shah will again travel to Bengal on 8 and 9 May for Rabindra Jayanti celebrations and visit Rabindranath Tagore’s birthplace to strengthen the party’s base here.
In Rajasthan
Shah visited Rajasthan on 15 April for a ‘Booth Maha Sammelan’ in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district, where he addressed over 4,000 booth presidents of the state, particularly focusing on the weak link of the party — East Rajasthan — where the BJP had won only one seat out of 19 in 2018.
Shah’s visit to Bharatpur was part of the BJP’s strategy to win back the region in assembly elections, likely to be held by the end of this year.
During his speech, Shah also poked fun at the ongoing squabble been CM Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot. “Pilot ji, whatever you do, your turn (to become Rajasthan CM) won’t come. Your contribution may be more on the ground but it is Gehlot ji who does more to fill the Congress’s coffers.”
In Maharashtra, Goa
After his visit to Rajasthan, Amit Shah travelled to Mumbai, Maharashtra, on 15 April, where he conferred the Maharashtra Bhushan award and met with state leaders separately to discuss their preparation for the BMC polls. He also had a separate meeting with Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
The next day, he was in Goa to address a rally in the southern part of the state. Goa has two Lok Sabha seats, one held by the BJP and the other by Congress.
After the Parliament’s Budget session ended on 6 April, Shah focused on finalising Karnataka’s BJP candidate list for the assembly elections to be held next month. However, the list was announced after Shah’s return from Assam, where he travelled to lay the foundation of a regional office of the BJP in Dibrugarh, address a rally, and launch the ‘Vibrant Villages’ programme on the state’s border with Arunachal Pradesh. The second list was announced on 12 April.
The Modi factor
According to a senior BJP leader, who spoke to ThePrint on condition of anonymity, Shah is ultimately leveraging Modi’s popularity to strengthen the party across states.
“He devises the strategy, which the party president J.P. Nadda implements. However, many times it is the PM who gives new ideas and concepts to strengthen the connection with the public, such as observing the foundation day of one state, organising Kashi-Tamil Sangamam programme, among other things…. However, day-to-day transactional goals are set and looked after by Shah,” he said.
A Delhi BJP leader and MP told The Print that during the UP Assembly polls he was on duty in Western UP, but after he didn’t turn up at a function due to another engagement, he got a call from Shah. “He asked if I was participating in the assigned function. I had to go soon after that call. Shah keeps a watch on every worker and the work assigned to them. There’s no fooling him,” he said.
Commenting on Modi and Shah’s “chemistry”, a former party general secretary likened it to Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s chemistry with L.K. Advani.
“Vajpayee used to take care of governance, while Advani took care of the party. Here, though, PM Modi not only takes care of governance but also the party. Modi and Shah’s chemistry is very old and both know how to make the party work like a well-oiled machine,” he said.
The PM, he said, gets feedback from several channels, which he sends on to Shah and party president J.P. Nadda. “And what the PM outlines, Shah implements on the ground in consultation with Nadda,” he said.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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