New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah completes his three years in office today. The BJP leader is considered Prime Minister Narendra Modi's alter ego, and the two have together given the BJP political sinews it could hardly even imagine before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
A blend of Modi's mass appeal and Shah's organisational skills and sagacity has resulted in BJP having 13 states under its belt and it is in power in five more with alliance partners.
Under Shah's watch, the BJP and its allies won a thumping victory in Uttar Pradesh, pocketing 73 of the state's 80 LokSabha seats. The wily Gujarat leader, a five-term MLA, was then in-charge of the BJP's campaign in the key cow belt state.
As the 52-year-old leader from Gujarat begins his fourth year at the helm of the party's affairs, he also makes his debut in Parliament as a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat. However, the victory of Congress veteran from Gujarat in the Rajya Sabha polls may somewhat mar the celebrations.
Shah was appointed the party chief in July 2014 following the induction of his predecessor Rajnath Singh into the Modi cabinet but the BJP's national council ratified the decision on August 9 that year.
If growing public support for a party is a measure of its chief's popularity, Shah is the most successful BJP president. Party leaders are quick to point out that under him the BJP has not only won most elections it contested, it also saw its vote percentage rise even in the polls it lost, like in Bihar.
Barring Bihar and Delhi, where it had to eat a humble pie, the BJP juggernaut rolled on as it formed its maiden governments in Assam, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir.
Under Shah, the BJP jettisoned its oldest saffron ally the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and contested Assembly polls on its own, emerging as the single largest party. The two parties are again together now, both in the state and at the Centre.
The party victory in UP assembly election is considered as his biggest achievement. Coming as it did in the wake of the demonetisation exercise, which was used by opposition parties to corner the central government, the victory put to rest any doubt over Modi's charisma waning and brought the BJP to power in India's politically most important state after a gap of 15 years, they said.
In states like Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Manipur, the BJP has tasted power for the first time. In Goa, where it finished second after Congress, Shah dispatched Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, a canny practitioner of realpolitik, to cobble together a majority and form a government with smaller parties.
In Arunachal Pradesh, the party under Shah engineered mass defection by 33 of the 43 MLAs of People's Party of Arunachal Pradesh, and formed its own government.
The party also notched more than ever vote share in local bodies polls in Odisha, Kerala and West Bengal, states which Shah has marked out as it as the next potential growth regions for the party during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.