On Wednesday (April 22), on the eve of the first phase of assembly elections in West Bengal, it was Union home minister Amit Shah — and not Prime Minister Narendra Modi — who was seen conducting a roadshow in Sonarpur Dakshin assembly constituency, in South 24 Parganas, part of the Greater Kolkata Metropolitan Area. Large crowds were seen lining both sides of the street, as Shah waved from atop his campaign vehicle. Earlier in the day, Shah posted a video where he was seen interacting with supporters at a poll rally who had their phones out photographing him across a bamboo fence, as the home minister asked them to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the crucial assembly elections, where the saffron party is going all out, after failing to form a government in the state despite three successive governments at the centre. Home minister Amit Shah outside parliament on August 5. 2019. Photo: PTI/File.The image of Shah entering parliament on August 5, 2019, months after first becoming home minister, with a plastic file and documents in hand, before proceeding to introduce surprise legislations that read down Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, revoking its special status, downgrading the state to two union territories, remains etched in India’s parliamentary history. However, it has been after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP was cut down to size, with Modi reduced to a minority, that Shah’s public facing stature appears to have grown. Not just from the man considered second only to Modi but as a star campaigner, the prime mover and defender of government business, and the man in charge of the BJP organisation despite its new figurehead.In all this, questions have arisen over the role Shah plays in the Modi government. Whether Shah is simply the second in command, deployed by Modi, to carry out tasks, consolidating his politics. Or is there a succession plan being put in place, particularly as the BJP sets sights on the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, looking to minimise the possibility of a repeat of 2024. According to Zoya Hasan, Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, the BJP which is “permanently in election mode” is “recalibrating for 2029” particularly in the face of domestic challenges and external pressures, including trade disputes with the Donald Trump administration and difficulties in projecting India’s position after Operation Sindoor, foreign policy headwinds, from strains in the neighbourhood to criticism over India’s stance on the genocide in Gaza and the war in Iran, that have dented Modi’s “Vishwaguru” image. “The BJP, permanently in election mode, is recalibrating for 2029. Shah, as a master of electoral engineering, is at the centre of it, bringing structural changes such as SIR, delimitation, and the push for ‘one nation, one election’. Alongside this, he is shaping and executing the right-wing populist agenda with a strong emphasis on majoritarian and security themes, evident in the centrality of issues like that of the ‘ghuspaithiya’ [infiltrator] in the West Bengal elections,” she said.“Shah’s role now extends beyond that of second-in-command; he is often in command, as the principal driver of both political strategy and governance priorities.”In this image posted on April 14, 2026, Union Home Minister Amit Shah during a public meeting ahead of the West Bengal Assembly elections, in Gajol. Photo: @AmitShah/X via PTI.Shah’s rise in profileThe roots of Shah addressing a large roadshow on the poll eve of a major state on Wednesday can be traced to 2024. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Shah as a star campaigner for the BJP addressed 188 rallies across the country, second only to Modi who addressed 206. In the 2025 Bihar assembly elections, following which the BJP emerged as the single largest party in the state for the first time, Shah however, had addressed 36 rallies, while Modi addressed 15. When the BJP managed to dislodge Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar from the head of the state after over two decades of holding that post, it was Shah who was seen seated next to Nitish as he filed his nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha. During the election campaign too, it was Shah who had set the cat among the pigeons by refusing to publicly declare Nitish as the NDA’s face in the state.In parliament too the last two years has seen Shah as the prime mover of often contentious government business.In December, facing sustained demands from the opposition to discuss in parliament, the contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, it was Shah, who replied to the discussion on “electoral reforms” and raised the “illegal immigrant” bogey to declare that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government’s policy is to “detect, delete and deport” while defending the exercise that has now resulted in lakhs being deleted from India’s voter rolls, with their citizenship under question. Just last week, Shah declared categorically in the Lok Sabha that the now defeated Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, which laid out the Modi government’s contentious Lok Sabha expansion-delimitation plan to “operationalise” women’s reservation, had been “piloted” by him, “Amit Shah, the home minister of India”. Last month, it was also Shah who defended Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on behalf of the government, who faced a no-confidence motion against him brought by opposition parties for being partisan. The Modi government’s recent increased hostility to online criticism particularly in the face of hostile geopolitical developments saw an unprecedented crackdown on online news portals, satirists, cartoonists, to ordinary users through a consolidated digital censorship regime that traces its roots to 2024 when the home ministry under Shah rolled out the Sahyog Portal. The portal allows automated notices to intermediaries not just from state authorities but also police, with no explanation to the end user whose content has been taken down. Observers said that Amit Shah’s transition from an organisational position to a governmental position began in 2019 when he took charge as home minister and was given important tasks, which he delivered for Modi.“It begins with a not so conspicuous amendment to the UAPA in 2019, followed by the reading down of Article 370, the CAA and others. That is the time when Amit Shah’s profile starts increasing as somebody who’s explaining and presenting the politics that Modi is pursuing,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, journalist and author whose books include Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.“In the last few years he’s also become a much more articulate campaigner for the party while being the home minister. So he is actually blending these roles of continuing to be the de facto party president as well as being the home minister of the country. I don’t see any difference between his and Modi’s politics, Shah is a true disciple of Modi. He has been second in command to Modi right from 2002 onwards, and he remains that he’s given very specific tasks by Modi, which he’s been delivering.”Modi-Shah’s long historyShah, a bio-chemistry graduate, has had a long history with Modi going back to the 1980s when Modi was a RSS pracharak and Shah was then an ordinary RSS Swayamsevak, The Caravan has reported. Later Shah moved to RSS’s student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and joined the BJP in 1986, a year before Modi. During Modi’s 12-year- tenure as Gujarat chief minister, Shah has held over at least as many as ten ministries at a time, including being junior minister in the home ministry.Mukhopadhyay previously writing in The Wire in 2016 when Shah was made BJP president for a second term, had noted that the importance of Shah in the rise of Modi, requires looking at the period in July 2010 when the Central Bureau of Investigation filed a charge sheet against Shah in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case, following which he was arrested. Prior to his detention, Shah “was being considered a vital cog in the wheel that would manage Modi’s eventual move to Delhi” and his arrest had “slowed the momentum down somewhat,” Mukhopadhyay had written. While Shah described the cases against him as “Congress witch hunt” to The Caravan, in the following years, just as cases against Modi following the 2002 Gujarat riots have fallen, as have those against Shah including the 2013 ‘snoopgate’ when he had allegedly ordered the tapping of a young woman’s phone. After being granted bail in the Sohrabuddin case, and allowed by the Supreme Court in 2012 to return to Gujarat again, Shah charted his path through the organisation building up to being Modi’s deputy. From being described by Modi as the “man of the match” after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, to the BJP recording successive electoral victories in key states, Shah established himself as an able BJP president. In subsequent years, the BJP’s moves to successfully dislodge elected governments such as in Maharashtra (2019), (Madhya Pradesh in 2023), are also said to have Shah’s imprint. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, center, being felicitated by Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, left, and Union Home Minister Amit Shah during the celebration of NDA’s victory in the Bihar Assembly elections, at BJP headquarters, in New Delhi, Friday, Nov. 14, 2025. Photo: PTI /Ravi ChoudharyModi’s man, a succession plan, and what nextWhile Shah’s profile may have grown publicly in the years after 2024, observers said that he still very much remains Modi’s man, and the actions since, have been a result of the two working together to realise the Hindutva project, and not Shah acting on his own.“These moves have been a dual venture. Shah is a brilliant mind and has a large risk appetite. As of now, Shah is being deployed by Modi and does not have the power to act independently,” said a veteran journalist in Gujarat who has observed the Modi-Shah years both in the state and in the centre.“It is after the 2024 Lok Sabha results, which were not up to Modi’s expectations, that there has been a larger role for Amit Shah. If the BJP had got an absolute majority, you would not have seen this Amit Shah. If there is any credit, Modi wants to take it all. But if there is any blame, Modi does not want it. Taking an apparent step back from the public view, allows Modi to reap the benefits but also keep his name away, if the results are not as expected.”Mukhopadhyay said that in order to understand the dynamics of the two, it is necessary to go beyond the public facets.“Both are aware of each other’s pasts, and cannot betray the other. As far as power is concerned, Modi wields far greater power, has far greater charismatic presence, is a much more articulate orator and is a popular leader,” he said.With Modi now over 75, the BJP’s earlier limit for those in public office, that had been applied to leaders like L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, the path ahead to 2029 also raises questions about Shah’s ambitions of succeeding Modi, and if the Prime Minister is indeed putting a succession plan in place.Shah is also only one of the contenders for a post-Modi BJP government. Those familiar with the RSS maintain that the field is left wide open with at least three claimants in the fray including names of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who is seeking a third straight term in India’s most electorally important state next year, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis as well as Shah himself.“Post Modi, once again, the book will start from page one for the RSS. It is going to be a different scenario. There are many claimants. It all depends when Modi goes, and in what circumstances. If they go out in an electoral defeat, then Amit Shah does not stand any chance because then it is going to mean a thorough overhaul of the BJP because Modi’s politics has not taken the party any further. This is the way it happened post 2004, when Vajpayee became irrelevant. But we cannot talk about that while the King is still alive,” said Mukhopadhyay.