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On July 8, Amit Shah, the youngest ever president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), completed a year at the helm of what is now the largest political party on the planet. His followers marked the event on Thursday with the hashtag #1YearOfShah on microblogging site Twitter. Praise ranged from calling him the ‘Chanakya’ of BJP and ‘one-man army’.
Shah’s successes since being elected party president have been significant, a feat that led Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling him the most successful BJP President ever. Shah’s expertise in backroom management has complemented Modi charming the electorate with his oratory.
Here is a short list of Shah’s successes and failure:
1. Under Shah, the BJP formed its first ever state governments in Jharkhand and Haryana. It severed its over-two decade old alliance with the Shiv Sena and emerged as the single largest party in Maharashtra. Another first was becoming part of a coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir.
2. The massive loss in Delhi to Aam Aadmi Party was a setback. Projecting Kiran Bedi as the chief ministerial candidate backfired.
3. It was under Shah that the BJP launched its massive membership drive. It enrolled 110 million members to surpass the Communist Party of China as the largest party on the planet. The BJP has now undertaken an equally ambitious and unprecedented task to train 1.5 million of its members in party ideology and establish party offices with libraries well stocked with party literature in each town.
4. Shah’s big challenge will be the Bihar Assembly elections in October-November. Those close to him tell doubters how Shah surprised many by delivering 71 of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha elections and will yet again leave people astonished with the BJP, along with its allies, on course to win at least 160 of Bihar’s 243 seats.
The party is similarly confident about its prospects in Assam in early 2016. Although, BJP’s Bengal campaign is looking weaker by the day with the party having lost miserably in the civic polls in May. Earlier this week, Shah told a meeting of party workers in the state that they should focus on 2019. The state unit later clarified that he had meant 2016 assembly polls but the message by then had gone out to its supporters.
5. The biggest contribution of Shah, his admirers in the party say, is to rid the party of a culture where leaders got prominence for doing parikrama - sycophancy and circumambulation - of senior leaders with limited mass base rather than for their parakram or heroics in the field.
6. Shah, however, has proved not as adept in streamlining the party's media outreach. BJP spokespersons have come across as out of depth in handling the recent media coverage of former Indian Premier League Commissioner Lalit Modi's alleged links with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje and the Vyapam scam. His comment that the Lok Sabha election promise to deposit Rs 15 lakh bank accounts of Indians by ensuring recovery of unaccounted money stashed abroad as 'chunavi jumla' (electoral rhetoric) was an honest admission but gave ammunition to the PM's critics.
(Archis Mohan covers politics for Business Standard)
(Archis Mohan covers politics for Business Standard)
