• At the NDA parliamentary party meeting on August 5, Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised Union Home Minister Amit Shah and noted that he has become the longest-serving Home Minister.

• With 2,258 days in office, Shah has now surpassed Advani’s tenure of 2,256 days as home minister. 

• Advani served as Home Minister from March 1998 to May 2004.

• Before Shah and Advani, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first home minister, served for 1,218 days.

• Shah, 60, has been the pivotal force of Prime Minister Modi’s government, giving new directions to the Ministry of Home Affairs in charting its course in maintaining internal security and peace across the country.

From BJP chief to Home Minister

• Amit Shah was born into a Gujarati family in Mumbai on October 22, 1964.

• Shah’s journey began at the age of 16 when he joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as a ‘swayamsevak’ in 1980, swiftly immersing himself in the activities of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

• Before coming to national politics, Shah was the home minister of Gujarat when Modi was the Chief Minister.

• He made history by becoming the youngest president of the Bharatiya Janata Party at 49 in 2014.

• Shah won the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency for the first time in 2019. He assumed office as one of the youngest Union Home Ministers at 54 in 2019.

• He got elected to the Lok Sabha in 2024 again and took oath as Union Home Minister for the second time that year. 

Major achievements as Home Minister

• Shah’s tenure has been marked by several historic decisions, including the abrogation of Article 370, which gave special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir.

• It was Shah who piloted three criminal laws — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam — which replaced the colonial era Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act of 1872, respectively. The new laws came into effect on July 1, 2024.

• It was during Shah’s tenure that Parliament enacted the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which envisages giving Indian nationality to persecuted minorities coming from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

• He has set a March 31, 2026, deadline to end the problem of Naxals and has achieved great success so far by freeing large areas from the clutches of the red ultras.

• In the Northeast, Shah has signed 12 peace agreements with different insurgent groups, thus ensuring the surrender of over 10,000 militants with arms and ammunition.

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