Dhaka: Amit Shah was elected Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president for a second term in the presence of a large gathering of leaders on Sunday but veterans LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi remained absent from the ceremony in the Indian capital.

He was re-elected unchallenged in a process widely seen as a formality, reports UNB, quoting Indian media.

This will be the first full term, for three years, for Shah who had taken over as party chief midway during Rajnath Singh’s term after the latter joined the cabinet in May 2014.

Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, several other Union ministers and BJP-ruled state chief ministers had proposed Shah’s name for BJP chief’s post during the nomination process earlier in the morning on Sunday, Hindustan Times, NDTV and CNN IBN reported.

Union minister Venkaiah Naidu said that the 51-year-old Shah was the most capable person who is committed to BJP’s ideology.

‘He is the most capable person, he has organisational ability, good strategies and above all, a commitment to our ideology,’ Naidu was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times newspaper.

On Sunday, Shah arrived at the party headquarters in New Delhi to file his nomination papers. However, several posters congratulating Shah in anticipation of his unopposed election as the party president had been put up at several places, the newspaper reported.

Under Shah’s leadership, the BJP scaled new heights by coming to power in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir. But the party had to face defeats in Delhi and Bihar assembly elections, triggering some rumblings in the BJP.