 "Set to return as BJP president, Amit Shah showcases his achievements")
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah, nearly certain of getting re-elected for a full three-year presidential term of his party in the days to come, brimmed with confidence on Wednesday as he faced television cameras to laud the government for having announced the ‘Prime Minister crop insurance scheme’.
The party believes the crop insurance scheme will help it deflect the criticism by the Opposition that the Narendra Modi-led government was anti-farmer. The criticism had gained ground after the efforts by the government to amend the 2013 Land Acquisition Act.
Apart from this renewed farmer friendly strategy, Shah is also slated to travel extensively to the states slated for assembly polls – Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and West Bengal. He is set to address a rally in Howrah on January 25. Reservations to his continuance as party president by veteran leaders like LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and others aside, no challenger has as yet emerged against Shah.
Party leaders say that Shah will be re-elected through “consensus”. Shah, currently serving the remainder of the term of his predecessor Rajnath Singh, looks set to be re-elected unopposed once the BJP concludes the organizational elections of its state units.
The process to elect the party president can be initiated once the state presidents of at least half the state units are elected. The BJP has 37 state units, and elections to at least 19 units need to be complete before its all India Returning Officer, currently Punjab Rajya Sabha MP Avinash Rai Khanna, notifies the presidential election. The party has concluded elections to 17 states.
Shah had faced flak from within the party after BJP’s loss in Bihar polls in November. But since then, Shah and his team of office-bearers has taken to stress how the Bihar reverse was a blip in an otherwise stellar 18-month tenure. According to details put up on Shah’s personal website, he has travelled an average of 521 km per day since he took over as BJP President in August 2014. He has travelled nearly 300,000 km during his tenure.
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“As part of measures to ensure best practices in the party, Shah discouraged use of private planes by party officials for travel, other than during elections. He also followed the same (principle),” the website states. He has also “encouraged” party officials and workers to stay in state government guest houses and “not in expensive hotels during their travel”. Shah led by example here as well, it states.
Other efforts by Shah include encouraging party leaders to stay overnight in districts to enable them to meet more party workers, and he himself has stayed overnight during over 80 per cent of his visits outside Delhi.
According to the website, Shah has made 135 visits to the states. The state he has visited the most is Maharashtra, followed by Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.