Aside from Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, there is nobody in the public eye who could be considered more responsible for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s extraordinary election victory than its new president, Amit Shah. In the BJP's sweep of Uttar Pradesh - of that state's 80 seats, the BJP or its allies won every single one that wasn't contested by a member of the Gandhi or the Yadav family - Mr Shah was the prime motive force. His decisions over candidate nominations and his last-minute decisions about where to send electoral reinforcements were all criticised at the time, but have been amply justified by results.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the BJP would wish to reward Mr Shah. And it has every right to select anyone it likes as president. However, by choosing Mr Shah, it has revealed a certain brazenness about how it treats allegations of law-breaking that it could perhaps have avoided. Mr Shah has been convicted of no crime, certainly. But that lack of legal force, of a duly handed down conviction, did not come in the way of the dismissal of past president Bangaru Laxman. It did not come in the way of the denial to Nitin Gadkari of a second term as president. This inconsistency is striking, and will inevitably be considered revealing, too. Observers will be forced to the conclusion that the BJP views the crimes that Mr Shah is accused of as of less moment than the crimes that Mr Laxman or Mr Gadkari were accused of.
The defence by senior BJP and government figures of Mr Shah's appointment is less than persuasive. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, for one, said that he is not "tainted", but "victimised". This may be possible. However, when Mr Jaitley's BJP made a fuss about "tainted ministers" in its time in opposition, the current finance minister did not make this argument. In general, claiming victimhood and victimisation is not an argument. The Congress party, too, should learn this; it merely makes you appear paranoid. The National Herald case, in which the Congress president and its vice-president stand accused of violating tax regulations, is being claimed by the Congress as an act of "vendetta". It would do better to respond to the allegations with substance than to seek to discredit them in this manner.
It is worth remembering exactly what Mr Shah is accused of, and how unusual it appears to the rest of the world that these accusations are being considered irrelevant. In the words of a Bloomberg report on the subject, Mr Shah "is on trial for ordering three murders, kidnapping witnesses, running an extortion racket and hiring criminals to shoot up a rival's headquarters. Between court hearings he'll now be running India's ruling party". Mr Shah may well be declared innocent of all these accusations. After all, a week before the Lok Sabha election results, the Central Bureau of Investigation said it would not chargesheet him in another high-profile fake encounter case. Nor have accusations last year that he used anti-terrorist squads to illegally snoop on a young woman led to legal charges. But Mr Shah's guilt or innocence is not the point. The inconsistency in the BJP's stand, and the message that it sends out, is the real story.
