Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah, the former President of the Bharatiya Janata Party and India’s Home Minister, was born on 22 October 1964 to a Gujarati couple Mrs. Kusum Ben and Mr. Anilchandra Shah living in Mumbai. Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah’s grandfather was a wealthy merchant (Nagar Seth) in Mansa, a small princely state of Baroda State of Gaikwad. Till the age of 16, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah lived in his native village Mansa in Gujarat. It is there where he received his primary education. The young Shah’s early education took place according to the ‘Indian Value Tradition’ under the supervision of prominent scholars of the Gaikwad State. He was taught Indian scriptures, historical texts, grammar and epics in his childhood. He continued to study Indian philosophy and texts even in the later years. 

Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah’s family moved to Ahmedabad after the completion of his primary education. His mother had a deep influence in his life. She was an avid Gandhian and she inspired him to wear Khadi. In his youth, while during education, he read biographies of many patriots and was deeply influenced by their passion for the motherland. He has been greatly influenced by the writings of K.M. Munshi.    

Shah was only 13 years old when the 1977 general elections were held during the emergency period. Despite his young age, he actively participated in election campaign putting up poster-stickers for the election candidate Maniben Patel, the daughter of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. She was then contesting as a candidate nominated by Jana Sangh from Mehsana Lok Sabha seat.
 
Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah’s public life began early at the age of 16 in 1980 when he joined as a young Swayamsevak of the Sangh. In the mean-time he also was associated with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi. In 1982, Shah was made joint secretary of the Gujarat unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. He also worked for the BJP in 1984 as a polling agent for Sanghvi booth of Narayanpur ward. In the year 1987, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah joined the Yuva Morcha of the BJP.

Due to his studious nature, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah was also associated with the Deendayal Research Institute in the eighties. He was with its state unit as the treasurer for eight years. During this period, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah got the opportunity to stay close to the great social reformer Nanaji Deshmukh and see his working style and learn from it.   

In 1989, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah became BJP secretary of BJP’s Ahmedabad unit. During this period, the wind of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi movement was blowing across the country. Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah fulfilled his responsibility given by the party in the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi movement and later in the Ekta Yatra. Whenever Shri LK Advani and Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee contested elections from Gandhinagar Lok Sabha, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah handled the responsibility of their election management very well. He handled this responsibility of managing Advani’s Lok Sabha elections till 2009.

In the nineties, the BJP began rising fast in Gujarat. Shri Narendra Modi held the designation of Organization Secretary of BJP in Gujarat. It was in the organizational work Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah came in touch with Shri Narendra Modi. Shah was associated with the party leadership in broadening and documenting the membership drive launched by the party in Gujarat.  

Given his background in business, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah already had a sound understanding of financial systems. He remained associated with his business till the initial days in politics. But later on, he had lesser time to spare for his business as he got more active in politics. When Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah became the chairman of Gujarat Pradesh Finance Corporation in the year 1995, he got an opportunity to apply his business acumen to improve the financial condition of the corporation. On account of his expertise, the corporation not only came out of the swamp of losses it was in, but also saw a spike in profits by 214 percent. It was during his tenure that lease purchase, working capital term loan and truck loan were introduced for the first time in the corporation.  

In 1997, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah was made the National Treasurer of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Yuva Morcha. In the same year, in the Sarkhej assembly by-election, the party nominated him as its candidate and he became MLA for the first time winning by a margin of 25,000 votes. Since then, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah continued to win every assembly election till 2012 and the margin of his victory increased in each of them. When he contested the assembly elections for the fifth time from Naranpura, the margin of his victory was of 63235 votes, this despite the fact that the number of voters had reduced to one fourth of that in the earlier years. During his long tenure as an MLA, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah gave impetus to development works in the area from different sources apart from the MLA funds. In 1998, he became the state secretary of Gujarat BJP and within a year he was given the responsibility of the state vice-president.  

In 2000 at the age of 36, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah became the youngest chairman of the Ahmedabad District Co-operative Bank (ADCB). During his tenure of one year, the bank not only made good the loss of 20.28 crores it had incurred earlier but also earned a profit of Rs.6.60 crores and was able to distribute 10 percent dividend to its shareholders. A year later, in 2001, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah was appointed as the convener of the National Co-operative Cell of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Shah was given an important responsibility by the party in the ‘Gaurav-Yatra’ organized for the first time in the 2002 assembly elections in Gujarat under the leadership of Shri Narendra Modi. BJP won the Gujarat assembly elections and Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah became a minister in the government. He was a Minister of Important Departments in the Government of Gujarat till 2010. He was given the responsibility of departments like Home, Traffic, Prohibition, Parliamentary Affairs, Law and Excise. As the Home Minister, he took a number of important measures for police modernization, safety of roads and reduction in crime.  

Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah, who is interested in cricket and chess, took over as the chairman of the Chess Association in 2006 while being a minister. As an experiment he got chess included in the primary schools of Ahmedabad.’ This experiment proved to be very useful in the development of mental abilities of children. Later on, as per the suggestion of the then Chief Minister Shri Narendra Modi, it was included in the schools across the state. During this period, a national chess competition “National B” was held in Gujarat for the first time. Twenty thousand players participated in the competition and the event was registered as a world record in the Guinness Book of World Record. The competition also hosted 4 thousand female chess players and the event found place as a record in the Limca Book.

In 2009, he also got the opportunity to become the Vice-Chairman of the Gujarat Cricket Association under the chairmanship of Shri Narendra Modi. He was also the President of the Ahmedabad Central Board of Cricket Association. During this period, Gujarat earned immense fame in the field of cricket. After Shri Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah became the President of the Gujarat Cricket Association.

Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah, being the Home Minister of Gujarat, had the responsibility of security. As a vigilant and alert administrator, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah considers weak and lumpy security to be a major obstacle in the development of society, country and state. As a minister in Gujarat, he continued to work seriously on security related issues. Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah was falsely accused of Sohrabuddin encounter while he was the Minister in Gujarat. He resigned. He also had to spend three months in jail during the trial. Granting him bail, the Gujarat High Court observed that “there is no prima facie case against Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah.” Later in 2015, a special CBI court acquitted Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah of all charges with the remark that his case ” was politically motivated.”

In 2012, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah was re-elected as MLA from Naranpura. The BJP made him the National General Secretary of the party in 2013. In the 2014 elections, when the BJP made Shri Narendra Modi its prime ministerial candidate, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah was sent as the in-charge of politically crucial state Uttar Pradesh. The country mandated in favor of Shri Narendra Modi and BJP got 73 seats from Uttar Pradesh and its vote share rose to 42%. It was a stupendous success for the party as well as testimony to Shah’s strategic acumen.

Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah was made the National President of BJP on 9 July 2014. His first term lasted till 2020. In his first term, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah strengthened the organizational base of the BJP in several states one after the other by making Narendra Modi’s popularity a means of fortifying the organization. One of the first initiative Shah took was to run a historical membership drive, it was a huge success as the number of BJP members reached 11 crores in just five months. Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah introduced several innovations as the President to run the party smoothly. Created departments and projects. Increased frequency of tours. Training programs for organising meetings began. He laid special emphasis on library and e-library in offices. Today libraries are running in many offices including the central office of BJP. Under his presidentship, the BJP-led government was formed for the first time in Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Haryana and Maharashtra. After this, the BJP once again elected him the national president in 2016. In 2016, he also became a trustee of the Somnath Temple Trust.

In the year 2017, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah was elected as a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat. After becoming the National President of BJP, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah did an organizational tour to every state of the country to further the party’s ideology and strategy. During this period, the BJP attained a number of important electoral successes.

By the time of 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the party’s base had widened across the country. The base of popularity of Shri Narendra Modi had become stronger. When BJP went to the 2019 elections under the leadership of Shri Narendra Modi, it got a bigger mandate than in 2014. Shah is given credit for expanding BJP’s footprint in Odisha, West Bengal and Telengana in 2019 Loksabha election. Now BJP is main opposition party in all three states where it used to be a nominal player.

Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah, who was a representative of Gujarat Legislative Assembly from 1997 to 2017 as a member of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly, contested the Lok Sabha elections from Gandhinagar for the first time in 2019. He got a great victory from Gandhinagar. He won over his nearest rival by a margin of 5 lakh 57 thousand votes by securing 70 percent votes.

Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah became the Home Minister in the Modi government that was re-elected in 2019. As Home Minister in Gujarat, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah used to constantly draw attention to the subjects which were obstructing the security and sovereignty of the country. Today, when he is the Home Minister of the country, he is becoming an important participant in the serious steps taken on those aspects under the leadership of Shri Narendra Modi. During his tenure as the Home Minister, the Modi government at the Center has taken conciliatory decisions on many historical and decades-old issues related to making the country’s internal security impenetrable. Abrogation of Article 370 and Citizenship Amendment Act are two important amongst several legislations brought by Home Minister Shah in initial few months of his tenure.  

Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah considers security as an important factor in the progress of the country. The path of peace and progress has been opened in the Kashmir Valley due to a permanent solution to a decades-old problem like Article 370. This historic decision has demoralized and weakened the designs of separatism and terrorism in Kashmir. Grassroots democracy has been reinstated by holding peaceful panchayat elections and now Kashmir valley is experiencing fruits of development like rest of the India.
 
After becoming the Home Minister, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah also peacefully resolved the pending problems related to the borders of the northeastern states and internal security there. Vexed issues like Bru-Reang Pact, resolution of Assam-Meghalaya border dispute, resolution of Bodo problem are among few achievements worth mentioning. Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah made a concrete strategy on the policy of zero tolerance against Left Wing Extremism. Today the Left Wing Extremism in India has been pushed to corners and is counting its days. The newly attained readiness of the internal security system to terrorism has resulted in the fact that terrorist activities have now been limited to sporadic incidences.

After becoming the Home Minister, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah prepared a complete blueprint to organize the new approach of disaster management according to the ten-point agenda set by Narendra Modi. His approach to disaster management covers all the crucial aspects related to dealing of calamities beginning from advanced planning to re-habilitation of affected people. Now people of India trusts National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and feel comfortable even in extreme calamities once they arrive. Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah, as the Home Minister, took several steps at the policy level to deal with the challenges of drug trade and drug consumption.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi formed the Ministry of Cooperation on July 6, 2021, Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah was given its charge. Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah’s experience in the cooperative sector is wide and extensive. Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah is working through this ministry with the goal of preparing the cooperative movement for the challenges of the present times while eliminating instability, creating a transparent system and restoring the confidence of the smallest farmer in the cooperative sector. Shah believes that a robust cooperative moment can become growth engine of India and immensely contribute in country’s GDP.

Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah is fond of different types of foods, likes old film songs and movies & movies based on lives of great Indians. He also enjoys playing chess. Since 2006, he has never gone on a foreign trip. He is known for his disciplined working style. He has a special interest in the study of history and his spirituality. In overall hard work is his hallmark.