For BJP, there's no better president than Amit Shah

Amit Shah was on Sunday formally declared as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president for the second consecutive term.

The decision in this regard was announced at the party headquarters here.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Health and Family Welfare Minister J.P. Nadda, Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs M. Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and the Chief Ministers of the BJP-ruled states proposed Shah's name for the presidential candidature after he filed his nomination papers.

Seen as a close confidante of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mr Shah was put at the helm midway during his predecessor Rajnath Singh's tenure after Mr Singh joined the government in May 2014.

PM Modi is hosting a dinner for Mr Shah and his team, including vice presidents, general secretaries and secretaries, tonight.

Under Mr Shah's stewardship, the BJP scaled new heights by coming to power in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir but a bit of the sheen was taken off by its back-to-back defeats in the Delhi and Bihar assembly elections, triggering some rumblings in the party.

However, party sources have insisted that his "energetic and focused" leadership has strengthened the organisation by pushing its membership across the country and expanding its reach in Assam, Kerala and West Bengal where the BJP had never been a force to reckon with.

The party president's election in the BJP is normally unopposed. Last time, senior party leader Yashwant Sinha had expressed his willingness to contest but later decided against it.

Many senior BJP leaders, including Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh attended the event, however veterans like LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi were missing.

His current term ended on Saturday and the new term will be his first full-term lasting three years. Shah's election was virtually a formality, party sources had said.