Amit Shah is BJP president, party wants repeat of UP triumph in Assembly polls

Putting all speculation to rest, the BJP today named Amit Shah as the next president of the party. Shah was in contention for the top party post along with JP Nadda and Om Prakash Mathur. The former Gujarat minister of state for home and Naranpura MLA, who has until now had a chequered career in politics due to his alleged involvement in the fake encounter cases of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife Kauser Bi and witness in that case Tulsiram Prajapati, was the late entrant in the race. However, given his exceptional organisational capacity, which saw the BJP win a mammoth 72 seats in Uttar Pradesh in the recent Lok Sabha polls, Shah became a front-runner almost instantly. [caption id=“attachment_1609257” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Amit Shah. AFP[/caption] Succeeding Rajnath Singh, who is now the de-facto No 2 in Modi’s cabinet as Union home minister, Shah will have his hands full with the Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand not very far away. “He is imaginative, organised and has great management skills,” Singh said before handing over reins to Shah. “We have all seen his (Shah’s) work in Uttar Pradesh during the Lok Sabha polls. This was the first time in BJP’s history when we did this well there,” Singh added singing Shah’s praises. Shah’s clout in the BJP rose immensely after he delivered the Uttar Pradesh near-miracle and it was inevitable that he would be rewarded and handed bigger responsibilities. With the 50-year-old Shah taking over the reins of the party, Modi’s control on the organisation is now complete. Maharashtra will be another challenge for Shah with the sudden passing away of Union Minister Gopinath Munde recently in a road accident that has left a huge void for the party in the state ahead of Assembly polls. As reported by _Firstpost_ , because of Munde’s demise the party not only lost its only chief ministerial candidate in Maharashtra but is also likely to cede some ground to its highly assertive alliance partner Shiv Sena. “Party workers who have pinned their hopes on Amit Shah becoming the next party president expect that this could lead to significant gains for the party in both these states – the BJP has occupied the opposition benches in both states (Maharashtra and Haryana) for several years and could do with the near-miraculous reversal of fortunes that Shah engineered in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha election”— a _Firstpost_ story said . Not only the Assembly polls, Shah will have to recreate his magic if the party wants victory in the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh vacated by Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, who also won from Azamgarh. “This will be a highly symbolic political contest between the two main rival parties in Uttar Pradesh, the party in power in the state versus the man who decimated it in the Lok Sabha elections,” a _Firstpost_ piece had said earlier . Earlier, the names of Mathur and Nadda were doing the rounds for the top post of the BJP. The 62-year-old Mathur belongs to Rajasthan where the BJP posted a stupendous performance, 3/4th majority in the Assembly and a 25-0 clean sweep in Lok Sabha. Although he had worked closely with Modi in last two Assembly elections in the state, it was ultimately not sufficient to pip Shah for the post. Another contender for the job, Nadda was seen “as a mild mannered, quintessential organisational man from Himachal Pradesh who has worked his way to reach top position in the party”. Nadda was brought to central party office as general secretary by Nitin Gadkari and shares a good equation with Modi. Again, this did not help him to get the top post. Although Mathur’s credentials would be weighed slightly higher than Nadda’s because the former spent longer years in the organisation and is also a contemporary of Modi and Rajnath Singh, Shah’s latest show in the polls overshadowed everything else.