Amit Shah, re-elected as BJP president, had joined party before Modi; know more facts

Amit Shah was on Sunday elected the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president for a full three-year term.

BJP president Amit Shah.

New Delhi: Amit Shah, a close confidant of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was on Sunday elected the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president for a full three-year term, retaining the post he has held since the party took power in the country in 2014.

Know more about the man:

• Th 51-year-old Shah took charge of the party in August 2014 from now Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
• Shah is a science graduate and the son of a businessman.
• Amit Shah moved towards the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in Gujarat in his young days, and later took to student politics.
• He met Modi in 1982, and the two have remained close since then.
• He joined the BJP in 1986 -- a year before Modi did. A four-time legislator in Gujarat, Shah was a home minister in the state when he was embroiled in a fake encounter case.
• Amit Shah rose to fame when he, as the party in-charge in Uttar Pradesh, led the BJP to a grand victory in the state in the 2014 Lok Sabha battle where it won 71 of the 80 seats. An ally won two more seats.
• It was the General Election where Shah and Modi combined to lead the party to a spectacular victory, ending 10 long years of Congress rule.
• His reputation as a strategic organiser took a beating when the Aam Aadmi Party routed the BJP in the Delhi Assembly Election in February last year -- the first popularity test after the Lok Sabha polls. The BJP was again defeated in the Bihar Assembly Election in November 2015.