86 Facts About Amit Shah

Amit Anil Chandra Shah was born on 22 October 1964 and is an Indian politician who is currently serving as the 31st Minister of Home Affairs since 2019 and the 1st Minister of Co-operation of India since 2021.

Amit Shah served as the 10th President of the Bharatiya Janata Party from 2014 to 2020.

Amit Shah has served as chairman of the National Democratic Alliance since 2014.

Amit Shah was elected to the lower house of Parliament, Lok Sabha, in the 2019 Indian general elections from Gandhinagar.

Amit Shah was the member of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly from Naranpura from 2012 to 2017 and Sarkhej from 1997 to 2012 and the Minister of State for Home, Law and Justice, Prison, Border Security, Civil Defence, Excise, Home Guards, Transport, Prohibition, Gram Rakshak Dal, Police Housing, Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs, Government of Gujarat in the Modi ministry from 2002 to 2012.

Amit Shah was the BJP's in-charge for India's largest and politically most crucial state, Uttar Pradesh, during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Amit Shah has played an organising and membership-promotional role in the elections of many states since 2014.

Amit Anil Chandra Shah was born in Mumbai on 22 October 1964.

Amit Shah came from a Gujarati Hindu family of the Baniya caste.

Amit Shah went to school in Mehsana and moved to Ahmedabad to study biochemistry at CU Shah Science College.

Amit Shah graduated with a BSc degree in biochemistry and then worked for his father's business.

Amit Shah worked as a stockbroker and in co-operative banks in Ahmedabad.

Amit Shah was involved with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh since childhood; he participated in the neighbourhood shakhas as a boy.

Amit Shah formally became an RSS swayamsevak during his college days in Ahmedabad.

Amit Shah first met Narendra Modi in 1982 through the Ahmedabad RSS circles.

Amit Shah started his political career as a leader of the student wing of the RSS, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, in 1983.

Amit Shah joined BJP in 1987, one year before Modi joined the party.

Amit Shah became an activist of the BJP's youth wing, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, in 1987.

Amit Shah gradually rose in the BJYM hierarchy, in which he held various posts including ward secretary, taluka secretary, state secretary, vice-president and general secretary.

Amit Shah became known for his management skills when he was the election campaign manager for Lal Krishna Advani in Gandhinagar during the 1991 Lok Sabha elections.

Modi and Amit Shah worked together to eliminate Congress in the rural areas.

Modi and Amit Shah used the same strategy to reduce Congress' influence over the state's powerful co-operatives, which played an important role in the state's economy.

In 1999, Amit Shah was elected as the president of the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank, the biggest cooperative bank in India.

Amit Shah turned around the bank's fortune within a year; the following year, the bank registered a profit of 27 crores.

Amit Shah ensured that 11 of the bank's 22 directors were BJP loyalists.

Modi and Amit Shah sought to reduce Congress' hold over sports bodies in the state.

Amit Shah served as the president of the Gujarat State Chess Association.

In 2014, after Modi became Prime Minister of India, Amit Shah became the president of GCA.

Amit Shah convinced Patel to appoint Shah as the chairman of the Gujarat State Financial Corporation, a public sector financial institution that finances small and medium-scale enterprises.

Amit Shah became an MLA in February 1997 after winning the by-election.

Amit Shah retained his seat in the 1998 Assembly elections.

Amit Shah contested the 2002 Assembly election from the Sarkhej constituency in Ahmedabad.

Amit Shah won by the highest margin among all candidates, with 158,036 votes.

Amit Shah improved his margin of victory in the 2007 Assembly election, in which he won from Sarkhej again.

Amit Shah piloted the Gujarat Control of Organised Crime Bill through the Gujarat State Assembly amid an opposition walk-out.

Amit Shah played an important role in convincing the Modi government to pass the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Bill, which made religious conversions difficult in the state of Gujarat.

Amit Shah was accused of sidelining the police officers who testified against the Gujarat government in cases related to the fake encounters and the 2002 riots.

Amit Shah has been accused of manipulating the electoral constituency delimitation exercise in Gujarat to favour the BJP.

In 2010, Amit Shah was accused of having orchestrated the extrajudicial killings of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife Kauser Bi and his criminal associate Tulsiram Prajapati.

The CBI presented phone call records, which showed that Amit Shah had been in touch with the accused police officers when the victims were in their custody.

Amit Shah dismissed all the accusations against him as politically motivated.

Amit Shah pointed out that during his tenure as Home Minister, Gujarat was one of the states with a small number of police encounters in the country.

Amit Shah stated that he kept in touch with the police officers on the phone in the normal course of his duties as Home Minister.

Amit Shah accused Congress of misusing the CBI and claimed that only the cases in Gujarat were being scrutinised, while the rest of the country had witnessed around 1,500 encounters during the same period.

Amit Shah said if the CBI had any solid evidence against him, it would have been able to frame charges against him.

Amit Shah was arrested on 25 July 2010 in connection with the Sohrabuddin case.

At one time, Amit Shah was considered one of the main contenders for Gujarat Chief Minister.

Amit Shah was thus forcibly exiled from the state from 2010 to 2012.

Amit Shah then contested and won the 2012 Assembly election from the Naranpura constituency.

In 2013, Amit Shah was accused of having ordered illegal surveillance on a woman in 2009 during his tenure as a home minister.

Amit Shah denied all the accusations against him; he called them political propaganda by his opponents.

Amit Shah requested the court to block any investigation, stating it would violate her privacy.

Amit Shah was appointed as a BJP general secretary and given charge of Uttar Pradesh.

Amit Shah was chosen not by Modi, but by Rajnath Singh, who had been impressed by the skills Shah displayed in wresting control of various Congress-controlled organisations in Gujarat.

In Uttar Pradesh, where Amit Shah was the in-charge, the BJP and its allies won 73 out of 80 seats.

Amit Shah had been made in-charge of the BJP's campaign in Uttar Pradesh on 12 June 2013, less than a year before the elections.

Since February 2012, Amit Shah had spent considerable time in Uttar Pradesh, where he tried to understand the reasons for the Samajwadi Party's victory in the 2012 UP Assembly elections.

Amit Shah realised the voters were dissatisfied with the Samajwadi Party, which he believed had failed to keep its election promises after the win.

Amit Shah oversaw the candidate selection, emphasising the candidate's local popularity and winning potential as the only criteria for selection, as opposed to the candidate's party loyalty or ideology.

Amit Shah set up a 7-to-10 member management committee for each of the 140,000 voting booths in the state.

Amit Shah's team used 450 GPS-enabled mobile vans to reach out to the masses in remote areas, where media reach was negligible.

Amit Shah covered 76 out of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies.

Amit Shah convinced Modi to utilise RSS volunteers for grassroots campaigning, which proved highly beneficial for the BJP.

However, unlike others, Amit Shah decided that the BJP would not provide money for hiring these vehicles.

Critics accused Amit Shah of trying to polarise the UP voters along the religious lines.

Amit Shah took advantage of Shia Muslim antipathy towards Sunni Muslims in Lucknow.

Amit Shah played an important role in the BJP's election campaigning strategy outside Uttar Pradesh.

Amit Shah focused on building Modi's image as a strong leader.

For example, when Modi praised his opponent and prospective post-poll ally Mamata Banerjee, Amit Shah insisted that the BJP must not divert from the "Modi-versus-all" tactic.

Amit Shah was responsible for forging the BJP's alliances with regional parties like Pattali Makkal Katchi.

Amit Shah was re-elected as the party's president unanimously on 24 January 2016.

Amit Shah spearheaded campaigning in the 2017 assembly elections, which resulted in the party's success in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Amit Shah led the BJP to victory in the 2019 Indian general election; he became the most successful BJP president.

Amit Shah is an admirer of Chanakya and often referred to as a modern-day Chanakya, who had skilfully replaced the Nanda dynasty by the young Chandragupta Maurya.

Amit Shah took oath as Cabinet Minister on 30 May 2019 and took office as Minister of Home Affairs on 1 June 2019.

On 5 August 2019, Amit Shah moved a resolution to scrap Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha and divide the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two, with Jammu and Kashmir serving as one of the union territories, and Ladakh serving as a separate union territory.

In September 2019, Amit Shah talked about how India needs one unifying language; he said the Hindi language should be spoken to unite the country and represent India in the world.

On 19 November 2019, Amit Shah declared in the Rajya Sabha of the Indian parliament that the National Register of Citizens would be implemented throughout the country.

Amit Shah insisted the bill was not anti-Muslim, because it did not change their existing path to citizenship.

Since 1989, Amit Shah has fought 28 elections to various local bodies.

Amit Shah portrayed the bill as a measure against forced conversions, although critics claimed that the bill undermined the Indian Constitution.

In 2014, EC barred Amit Shah from conducting any public processions, marches, gatherings and roadshows in Uttar Pradesh due to speeches that were made to outrage the religious feelings and beliefs of different classes.

Amit Shah is married to Sonal Amit Shah and the couple have a son named Jay.

People close to Amit Shah have described him as someone who does not like to socialise much.

Amit Shah has six sisters, two of whom live in Chicago.

On 2 August 2020, Amit Shah tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted to the hospital.