BJP President Rajnath Singh’s protestations about completing his term are the only roadblock in the appointment of the low-profile Jagat Prakash Nadda as his successor in the party organisation.
The BJP chief is not keen to relinquish his post to join Narendra Modi’s Cabinet where he is tipped to get a senior post.
“I have said earlier and I say it again, I want to continue to serve the organisation,” Singh told
However, there is immense pressure on Singh to make way for Nadda, who is presently a General Secretary in the BJP. One reason for this is believed to be a desire not to create two “power centres.”
Rajnath Singh has, in the last one year, emerged as a powerful organisational head. With his keen understanding of the Hindi heartland politics and experience as a former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Singh is no pushover.
While Narendra Modi becomes the first among the equals in the Union Cabinet, Singh would like to continue to wield clout within the party.
This is apparently not an ideal scenario. Having experienced dissensions and factional politics in the last one decade, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is believed to be keen on a less high-profile and relatively non-ambitious leader than Rajnath Singh to head the party at this juncture.
The quiet and retiring Jagat Prakash Nadda from the hills fits the bill. Although he hails from Vijaypur village in the Bilaspur district of Himachal Pradesh, Nadda grew up in Bihar and studied in Patna. His father, NL Nadda, was the Vice-Chancellor of Ranchi University, and he grew up in undivided Bihar. His wife, Mallika Nadda, is a Bengali from Bihar. She teaches in the Distance Education Department of Himachal Pradesh University.
While he grew up in Bihar, Nadda went back to his home State for higher studies, joining the Himachal Pradesh University during the turbulent 1970s.
In the university, Nadda joined the RSS’s student wing, the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), and was active in the JP Movement. In his leadership, the ABVP defeated the Students Federation of India (SFI) for the first time in the Left-dominated campus and Nadda became the student’s union president.
He rose to function as the top functionary of the RSS as General Secretary (Organisation) in the Himachal Pradesh State BJP unit before Murli Manohar Joshi appointed him president of the BJP’s youth wing, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha.
First Assembly electionNadda won his first Assembly election from Bilaspur in 1993 at the peak of an anti-BJP wave in the hill State. In 1998, he became the health minister in PK Dhumal’s Cabinet. He lost the Assembly elections in 2003, but won again in 2007 and was appointed forest minister by Dhumal.
However, Dhumal and his son Anurag Thakur are not exactly friendly with Nadda.
Since 2010, he has been a General Secretary in the Central BJP and was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2012.
“He really is not a very ambitious person. A quiet, laidback pahari is what he essentially is. But Naddaji is a good organisation man and you hardly meet anyone who has a bad word to say about him. And that’s saying a lot in politics,” said a BJP source.
So, while the “laidback pahari ” is most likely taking over as BJP chief, the politically astute Amit Shah is expected to play a pivotal role in the functioning of the BJP in the coming months.
Shah is currently the General Secretary in the BJP, and has been vocal about his preference for continuing to work for the organisation, contrary to expectations about him joining the government.