Amit Shah Reveals BJP's Mission 2019

Boosted by an emphatic win in Assam, Amit Shah is now recasting BJP for other state elections and the 2019 prize.

- UdayMahurkar

AMIT SHAH, PRESIDENT, BJP

Forty-eight hours after a BJP-led front swept the May 19 assembly polls in Assam, party president Amit Shah immersed himself in parlays with his party colleagues. The venue was his office at the party’s 11, Ashoka Road headquarters. To call their mood upbeat would be an understatement. The victory in Assam was a balm for the battering the BJP had received in the Bihar polls last November. It was redemption for Shah, who had promised to deliver the state to the party in his inaugural speech as party president on August 9, 2014. Shah and his party leaders did not even discuss Assam. They were looking far beyond the horizon— crafting strategies for state elections in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh next year and the second term for Narendra Modi in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. But for the booster shot of Assam, these strategies would never merit discussion.

The Bihar defeat saw a mellowed-down, even approachable Shah. His second term as BJP president hung in balance. Now, the aggression is back. The BJP coined the phrase ‘Congressmukt Bharat’ in 2014. Shah flung it again at his rivals on counting day, May 19. “The nation is two steps away from its aim of creating a Congress-mukt Bharat,” he told the media. There was no guessing which party would fill the space vacated by the Grand Old Party.

“The BJP is a pan-India party now,” he told INDIA TODAY. “We are now present from Kutch to Kamrup and from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.”

A NEW ELECTORAL WAR MACHINE