Amit Shah re-elected BJP chief

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s confidante Amit Shah was on Sunday unanimously elected as BJP president, giving him second term in office.

Though 17 nominations from 20 states and the parliamentary board proposing Shah’s name for the president’s post, veteran leaders L K Advani, M M Joshi, Shanta Kumar and Yashwant Sinha skipped the ceremony at the Ashok Road headquarters.

On Sunday afternoon, party’s election officer Avinash Rai Khanna announced that Shah has been unanimously elected president.  The crowd broke into celebrations, bursting crackers, beating drums and blowing conch shells.

There was a thunderous applause from senior Union ministers, eight BJP-ruled state chief ministers and other leaders present.

With Prime Minister Narenda Modi busy in French president’s visit to Chandigarh, Rajnath Singh was the first to garland Shah followed by other senior leaders Nitin Gadkari and M Venkaiah Naidu. Two senior ministers Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj could not make it due to their prior engagements.

Modi took to twitter to congratulate Shah. “I'm confident party will scale newer heights under his leadership,” he posted on the social media. Expressing confidence that the party will perform tremendously under his leadership, Rajnath Singh said, “only one nomination and that was of Amit Shah. I believe the reason behind it was the unanimous decision of the party members. I congratulate him and I have full faith that the party will perform tremendously under his leadership”.

Shah is expected to have his own new team by next month, dropping some of the outgoing party office bearers while including new faces from state units and among Union ministers.

A reshuffle in the government is also expected and the prime minister too is likely to drop some ministers who are non-performing and are from states disproportionately represented. He is also expected to  induct new talent from the party which would to appreciate their commitment and performance.

Shah was appointed chief for the first time in August 2014 to complete Rajnath Singh’s remaining term after the latter had joined the Modi government as Union minister.