The BJP may name a working president soon, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president J.P. Nadda set to hold a meeting of the State party presidents, State in-charges and national office-bearers here this weekend over the organisational polls.
Mr. Nadda’s tenure is in fact over, and with his joining the Union Cabinet in June, it is clear that while the BJP’s constitution allows a second successive term, he will not be repeated in that post.
The process of electing the BJP president begins with a membership drive at the mandal and block levels, with elections to the post of president at these levels, followed by the State presidents. When 50 per cent of the States elect State presidents, election for the national president is held. While the BJP president is elected, there is usually no contest for the post, with a name agreed upon by senior leaders being the only candidate in the fray.
In Mr. Nadda’s case, he was appointed working president of the BJP in 2019 when then party chief Amit Shah joined the government. Mr. Nadda was later elected president in 2020, after completion of all formalities.
In the current scenario too, it is likely that the name of a working president will be announced, and the formal process of electing the president then getting under way.
RSS stand
While several names are making the rounds, the RSS, the ideological mothership of the BJP, is determined to have more of a say in who gets to be the next party president, a departure from the way things were done in the last 10 years, where the RSS was informed of the choice by the BJP high command.
The below-par performance of the BJP in the last Lok Sabha election, when it lost its single-party majority, and the RSS’s concern that too many outsiders had been accommodated in the party at the cost of long-time workers and leaders, have led the RSS to actively intervene in the president selection process.
A five-hour marathon meeting of Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Mr. Shah and Mr. Nadda, along with BJP general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santhosh with RSS second-in-command Dattatreya Hosabele at Mr. Singh’s residence on Sunday night was, sources confirmed, held to arrive at a name acceptable to both the BJP and the RSS.
“There is a desire on the part of the RSS that a name for working president be announced before the annual Samanway (coordination) meeting of the RSS and its affiliates such as the BJP, VHP and others, gets under way in Palakkad (Kerala) between August 31 and September 2. Attempts had been made earlier to push the election process till after the Assembly polls in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir, but it seems the RSS has imposed a timetable,” said a senior source in the party.
Names of senior leaders and Union Ministers have started to make the rounds as possible replacements for Mr. Nadda, but sources say it will be someone who will be acceptable to both the BJP high command and the RSS.
