The political temperature in Gujarat is going up by the day with Assembly election due later this year. The BJP is seeking to maintain its dominance in the home State of not just Prime Minister Narendra Modi but also Union Home Minister Amit Shah. While for many years, Mr. Shah has been seen as the man looking after the nuts and bolts of the impressive electoral machinery of the BJP, some of it is from a playbook Mr. Modi set in place in the late 1980s and 1990s.
In the recently released book Modi@20: Dreams Meet Delivery (BlueKraft Digital), Mr. Shah’s essay describing his association with the Prime Minister from more than three decades ago has some interesting nuggets with regard to how the party did a creeping acquisition of electoral support in the State, working to a plan set out by Mr. Modi, who was general secretary (organisation) in the State unit then.
After having launched in 1988 a Sanghathan Parva, or enrolment drive, for the BJP, with proper registers of enrolments, Mr. Shah says he undertook two long tours of the State accompanying Mr. Modi.
