DNA Edit | Trailblazer Shah: BJP president has galvanised the party

If after 2014, the BJP has been able to establish its footholds in terra incognito constituencies around India, it has been because PM Modi has had a foot soldier on the ground deftly implementing his political vision across the length and breadth of India. It was BJP president Amit Shah’s astute managerial skills that saw the BJP establishing governments in Goa, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh even when the party was not in the majority.

In Goa, Shah deployed Road and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari to patch together a coalition, while the Congress, which had won a larger share of seats, squandered a low-hanging fruit under the inept management of Digvijay Singh. In Arunachal Pradesh, Shah was the architect behind the mass defections of 43 of its 44 Congress MLAs to the People’s Party of Arunachal, a constituent of the BJP-led North-East Democratic Alliance. In the wake of the defections, the Congress perfunctorily accused the BJP of “foul play of democracy” but, in retrospect, that has accounted for little.

Meanwhile, under Shah, the BJP also registered its first ever win in the state of Assam. The victory was sweeter as the Congress lost out on 53 seats, slumping from 79 to 26 seats while the BJP under Sarbananda Sonowal won a phenomenal 60 seats. Such a groundswell is not engineered on the back of a dispirited party worker base and a rudderless leaders’ cadre; the very problem that afflicts the rank and file of Congress. From its bigwigs to its workers, Congress’ collective morale is down in the dumps. It does not take a political expert to see that Congress’ animus — what with the vacuous and woolly supervision of Rahul Gandhi — is completely absent. No wonder then that senior  Congress leaders like Jairam Ramesh feel that it is kosher to bite the party’s head on public platforms bemoaning dramatically the “existential crisis” and the loss of the sultanate.

While Congress can’t look beyond its coterie of New Delhi lawyer-politicians, Shah has bumped up party membership from 3.5 crore before 2014 to over 10 crore in 2015. It is Shah’s tireless enterprise that has been helping BJP surge full steam ahead. Over the last three years, he has participated in over 800 organisational meetings engaged in electoral management in over 16 states and is reported to have address 575 rallies in poll-bound states. If Shah does not relent in his pace and his unremitting onslaught, perhaps the day when India would be Congress-mukt is not too far off. If not for itself, then for the sake of a healthy democracy, the Congress should wake up now.