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”