New Delhi:
In December 2002, Narendra Modi crushed the Congress to win a record 126 seats in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly. The BJP man who won by the highest margin of votes, over 1.58 lakh and even higher than Modi himself, was his close confidant Amit Anilchandra Shah in Sarkhej, Ahmedabad.
Sarkhej has elected Amit Shah as its MLA in four consecutive elections. He bettered his 2002 margin of victory in 2007, winning by a lead of 2.35 lakh votes.
Till the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case came back to haunt him, Shah has only risen, not least because of his mentor, Narendra Modi, whose second-in-command he has been for some time now. Before the CBI net started closing in on Shah this year, he was even considered an option for Chief Minister if Narendra Modi had to move to national politics.
But Shah, 45, is not popular among colleagues. His fellow ministers have been quoted as saying that the Minister of State for Home is remote and autocratic, some say arrogant, and has not bothered to keep the best of personal relations with his colleagues.
Thus, many in the Gujarat government have been distancing themselves from Shah. Physically, that has not been a difficult task since Shah has largely been unseen for the last few months.
Shah, who was forced to quit office, after the CBI named him in their chargesheet for the murder of Shohrabuddin Sheikh, had not attended office ever since the arrest of Ahmedabad crime branch top cop Abhay Chudasama on April 27.
On May 1, Shah's absence was telling at a celebration of Gujarat's 50 years. The Home Minister had planned the function. From then on, Shah has virtually disappeared. He is also said to have stopped using his official mobile phone and his official car. A national daily reported in June that he had lost over 10 kg from stress since the CBI began investigating the fake encounter case.
The CBI has reportedly come across evidence that suggests that Shah was in constant touch with the senior policemen involved in the alleged Sohrabuddin fake encounter of 2005.
The CBI took over investigations into the death of Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausar Bi in January 2010 on the direction of the Supreme Court. Abhay Chudasama was the fourth IPS officer to be arrested in the case.
The state CID, which had investigated the case earlier, had arrested DG Vanzara and Rajkumar Pandian, both IPS officers of the Gujarat cadre and Dinesh M N, an IPS officer from Rajasthan along with 10 other policemen, in the case.
Shah holds a Bachelor's degree in Bio-Chemistry, was an RSS volunteer and a leader of the BJP's youth wing, the ABVP. He then rose up the ranks holding various posts in the Gujarat unit of the BJP. In March this year, he was made a Special Invitee to the BJP National Executive.
Amit Shah has been the president of the Gujarat state chess association, the game Modi has recently professed great fondness for. He is also vice-president to Modi's president of the state's cricket association.