Amit Shah

Amit Anilchandra Shah (born 22 October 1964) is an Indian politician who has served as the 32nd Minister of Home Affairs since 2019, the longest-serving holder of the office in Indian history. Additionally he has been the 1st Minister of Co-operation since July 2021. He is also the member of parliament (MP) for Gandhinagar. He served as the 10th president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from 2014 to 2020. He has also served as chairman of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) since 2014. He had been elected as a member of the upper house of parliament, Rajya Sabha, from Gujarat from 2017 to 2019. Shah is a chief strategist of the BJP and an ardent ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Shah also served as a member of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly from Naranpura Assembly constituency from 2012 to 2017 and Sarkhej from 1997 to 2012 and the minister of State for Home, Law and Justice, Prison, Border Security, Civil Defense, Excise, Home Guards, Transport, Prohibition, Gram Rakshak Dal, Police Housing, Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs, government of Gujarat in the Modi ministry from 2002 to 2012. During his college days, Shah was a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). At the age of 18, he secured a position in the ABVP and joined the BJP in 1987. Shah was the BJP's in-charge for India's largest and politically most crucial state, Uttar Pradesh, during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP-led NDA won 73 out of 80 seats. As a result, Shah rose to national prominence and was appointed as the party's national president in July 2014. He has played an organising and membership-promotional role in the elections of many states since 2014. In his initial two years, the BJP achieved success in legislative assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand and Assam but lost ground in Delhi and the large eastern state of Bihar in 2015. In 2017, he was partly credited with the party victories in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Manipur, but the Akali–BJP alliance lost power in the larger Punjab election. In 2018, the party lost power in the states of Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. A year later, the BJP won 303 seats to get a majority in the 2019 Indian general election under Shah's leadership. Shah currently holds the title of "2nd most powerful man in India," just behind Narendra Modi.