New Delhi, May 18 (Daily Bhaskar) : When Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah was appointed as the general secretary in charge of delivering Uttar Pradesh for BJP, leaders in the state wondered what was in store. After all, Narendra Modi was sending his Man Friday.
Now, after delivering UP for Modi, Shah is gearing up for a wider national role, though the man remains tight-lipped about what that role is. For now, he has moved into an apartment in Delhi's tony Jangpura area, paying a rent of Rs. 38,000.
A student of biochemistry, Shah started out by dabbling in the stock market before trying his hand at the family business of PVC pipe making.
Born into a well-established business family in 1964, Shah was drawn to RSS as a boy and his association with Modi goes back to 1980s. Both joined BJP around the same time.
It was Narendra Modi who convinced then Gujarat CM Keshubhai Patel to appoint Shah chairman of Gujarat State Finance Corporation in 1995. From the strength of that strategic post Shah kept a vigil on the Gujarat BJP for his mentor while Modi was banished from the state a few years later as part of a peace deal between rebel Shankarsinh Vaghela and the BJP high command.
But his time came in 2002, when Modi won a thumping victory in the Gujarat assembly polls. Shah was given charge of as many as 10 portfolios including home, law and justice, prison, border security, housing and parliamentary affairs.
It was not only in floor management where Shah excelled, his skills soon saw BJP expanding its foot print into sports bodies and the cooperative sector.
He is also expected to play an important role in the new government. In every strategic discussion that the party has held this week in anticipation of a big win, Shah has figured.
He is the man that Modi had handed the task of delivering the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh for the BJP in the general elections. Known for his election winning abilities, Shah had 11 months to effect a 360 degree reversal - the BJP held 10 seats in UP and its cadres had been in disarray for years.
Today BJP has registered a mindboggling win in Uttar Pradesh by bagging 71 out of 80 seats. The BJP's best performance in UP previously was in 1998 - 57 out of 85 seats since Uttarakhand was yet to be carved out of it. Amit Shah scripted the UP turnaround with a watertight strategy, drawing on the state's historical electoral dynamics like the caste factor.
A few days before the region voted, he stoked controversy by describing Muslim-dominated Azamgarh, from where SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has contested, as a "hub of terror." It was an ill-concealed effort to polarise Hindu votes for the BJP in eastern UP.
Mr Shah also played on communal polarisation in western UP, recently scarred by deadly riots. He fielded three party leaders named in riot cases and made an incendiary speech in Muzaffarnagar, the epicentre of the riots, earning a temporary ban from campaigning from the Election Commission.
That's not the only controversy Shah has been in recently. He is at the centre of a huge row over the alleged illegal surveillance of a young woman by the Gujarat police when he was the state's home minister.
He got a clean chit this month from the CBI in the 2002 encounter killing of Mumbai student Ishrat Jahan, but still faces murder and other charges in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case and is out on bail.
He has been in prison and also spent almost two years exiled by court from Gujarat.