page_title: Amit Shah
section_title: President of the BJP
hierarchical_section_title: Amit Shah / President of the BJP
caption_attribution_description: Shri Modi congratulates Amit Shah as he takes charge of BJP
context_page_description: Amit Anilchandra Shah is an Indian politician currently serving as the Minister of Home Affairs. He served as the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party from 2014 to 2020. He was elected to the lower house of Parliament, Lok Sabha, in the 2019 Indian general elections from Gandhinagar. Earlier, he had been elected as a member of the upper house of Parliament, Rajya Sabha, from Gujarat in 2017. Sworn in at the age of 54, he is the youngest serving full-time Home Minister. He is the chief strategist of the BJP and a close aide to Narendra Modi.
  During his college days, Shah was a member of the ABVP, the student wing of the RSS. At the age of 18, he secured a position in the ABVP and joined the BJP in 1987. Shah was first elected in Gujarat as the MLA for a seat partly covering Ahmedabad, Sarkhej in 1997. He continued to hold it in the 1998, 2002 and 2007 elections until the seat's dissolution in 2008; he then got elected from the nearby Naranpura in 2012. As a close associate of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, he held executive portfolios in the Gujarat state government.
context_section_description: In July 2014, the BJP's central parliamentary board unanimously approved Shah's appointment as president of the party. He was reelected as the party's president unanimously on 24 January 2016. After becoming party president, Shah started an aggressive membership drive, and by March 2015, the BJP had claimed 100 million members.
  In 2014 to 2016, the BJP achieved success in Legislative Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand and Assam but lost the elections in Delhi and Bihar.
  Shah also spearheaded campaigning in the 2017 assembly elections, which resulted in the party's success in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. This was the BJP's greatest run in recent elections; they won 312 seats out of 403. The BJP also progressed in Manipur. The BJP won the 2017 Gujarat Legislative Assembly polls for a record six times and wrested power from Congress during the 2017 Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly polls. In March 2018, the BJP won for the first time in the left-ruled north-eastern state of Tripura, where they won two-thirds of the votes. The BJP also made gains in Nagaland and Meghalaya and formed a government in both states with its allies.
  Shah led the BJP to victory in the 2019 Indian general election; he became the most successful BJP president. During the election campaign, he visited 312 of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies, holding 18 roadshows, 161 public meetings and over 1,500 BJP meetings.
  He is an admirer of Chanakya and often referred to as a modern-day Chanakya, who had skillfully replaced the Nanda dynasty by the young Chandragupta Maurya. Responding to questions about a portrait of Chanakya at his New Delhi residence in 2016, he said: "[I admire] Chanakya because he was knowledgeable. His sutras are eternal. Economics, politics, the problem of governance are all there.” The Bhagavata Purana is another of his favorite books, which he studied when he was in prison.
caption: Modi congratulates Shah as he becomes BJP president.
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