A look at the top 10 most influential politicians in India
Prime Minister Narendra Modi; (Illustration: Nilanjan Das)
Politics, as most of its practitioners would have us believe, is a tool for the larger public good. But often it’s a no-holds-barred power game played out without any pretence. It has certainly seemed so in the past decade, with the firm grip the BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), have on India’s political landscape going almost unchallenged. Two consecutive and massive Lok Sabha wins are just one indicator of this dominance. Not surprisingly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his trusted lieutenant and Union home minister Amit Shah and the RSS luminaries—Mohan Bhagwat and Dattatreya Hosabale—occupy the top three slots of india today’s political power list. They are followed by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who holds the keys to the BJP’s electoral fortunes in a state with the highest number of Lok Sabha seats (80). There are two more from the BJP stable among the top 10—Union minister Nitin Gadkari, with his superlative performance in spreading our highways network, and BJP president J.P. Nadda, who has taken party organisation and election management skills to another level. With his successful Bharat Jodo Yatra, followed by the party’s landslide victory in Karnataka, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has firmly established himself as the top challenger to Modi. Giving him company in the power list are two other chief ministers—West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee and Delhi’s Arvind Kejriwal. Both have prime ministerial ambitions and are seeking to expand their party’s wings beyond the home turf for national acceptance.