Union Home Minister Amit Shah will contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from Gujarat’s Gandhinagar. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has unveiled its first list of 195 candidates, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow.
Amit Shah is seeking re-election from Gandhinagar, a seat that was previously represented by former deputy PM and BJP chief LK Advani. In the 1996 Lok Sabha elections, Atal Bihari Vajpayee won from both Gandhinagar and Lucknow, but the former Prime Minister decided to retain his Lucknow seat.
Five facts about Amit Shah:
1) Born on October 22, 1964, to Anilchandra Shah and Kusumben in Mumbai, Amit Shah acquired his primary education in Gujarat’s Mansa where he stayed until the age of 16. Apart from his mother, the teachings of Kanhaiyalal Maneklal Munshi, an Independence movement activist, politician and writer, also had a deep influence on Amit Shah. The family moved to Ahmedabad after the completion of his primary education.
2) Amit Shah’s interest in politics could be gauged from his active participation in the election campaign of Maniben Patel, the daughter of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, at the age of 13. Maniben was contesting on a Jana Sangh ticket from the Mehsana Lok Sabha seat. A few years later, Mr Shah joined the RSS and in 1982, he was made joint secretary of the Gujarat unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. In 1987, he joined the Yuva Morcha of the BJP.
3) Amit Shah, who became the secretary of BJP’s Ahmedabad unit in 1989, participated in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and later in the Ekta Yatra. He was tasked with the election management of the Gandhinagar constituency when LK Advani represented the seat in Parliament. It was in the 90s that Mr Shah also came in touch with Narendra Modi, who was the secretary of Gujarat BJP.
4) In 1997, Amit Shah, already the National Treasurer of the BJP’s Yuva Morcha, contested the Sarkhej assembly by-election and won by a margin of 25,000 votes. He kept the seat until 2012 when he contested from Naranpura after delimitation. During his tenure as an MLA, Amit Shah developed close ties with then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, eventually forming one-half of the Modi-Shah juggernaut. He held several portfolios, including Home, Traffic, Parliamentary Affairs and Law and Excise in the Gujarat government.
5) In 2014, he took over as the BJP National President and was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat in 2017. In 2019, he entered the Lok Sabha after winning the Gandhinagar seat by a margin of over 5 lakh votes. He became the country’s Home Minister. In perhaps the biggest announcement of his political career, Amit Shah, on August 5, 2019, scrapped Article 370 that granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir. The Centre also bifurcated the state into two Union Territories – Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
