BJP may get a new president, top leaders under consideration

NEW DELHI: With the extension given to Jagat Prakash Nadda as BJP national president ending this month, speculation among party workers and leaders is about whom the party will fall back on as the next president.
In the run-up to the general elections, the name of former Haryana Chief Minister and now Member of Parliament from Karnal, 70-year-old Manohar Lal Khattar was seen as likely to replace Nadda.

However, a section within the party, supporters and media are talking about former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and now MP from Vidisha, Shivraj Singh Chouhan as party president. Apart from having more than 15 years of experience as the CM of a large state, Chouhan also has significant experience of working in the organization, given his stint with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha.
The 65-year-old Chouhan is known for his no-conflict approach and focus on taking everyone along, a perception that he tried to break before the 2023 Assembly elections when he started suspending officials publicly and demolishing the homes of alleged criminals by using bulldozers.

Chouhan is now considered only next to Amit Shah,59, and Rajnath Singh, 72, and at par with Nitin Gadkari, 67, as per the perception among the party’s mid-rung leaders. This perception will gain weight if Chouhan, as is being widely speculated, is given a big ministry.

Given the below-par performance by the BJP in the election because of which it is now dependent on its allies to run the government, a section within party leaders, including those in senior position in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, believe that it could be some other senior leader too who would be given the responsibility to remove the deficiencies that have crept into the organisation, which includes the failure of the feedback system in accurately gauging ground reality.

The failure

of the BJP to reach the much talked about 370 seats, and being limited to just 240 seats, from 303 what it had got in the 2019 elections, is being attributed to multiple reasons, including complacency and a lackadaisical approach by some towards campaigning. A senior and respected BJP insider, Nadda was appointed as “Working President” in June 2019. On 20 January 2020, he was appointed as the full time president of the party replacing Shah. After the end of his three-year tenure in January 2023, he was given an extension till June 2024.

During Nadda’s five-year tenure, including six months as working president, Assembly elections took place in 29 states, out of which BJP came to power, alone or with allies, in 16 states, giving him a strike rate of 55%.

The wins that it registered were in Haryana (2019), Bihar (2020), Assam and Puducherry (2021), Goa, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Gujarat (2022), Tripura, Nagaland, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan (2023), and Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh this year. The losses that the BJP faced were in Maharashtra, Jharkhand (2019), Delhi (2020), West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala (2021), Punjab, Himachal Pradesh (2022), Meghalaya, Karnataka, Mizoram, Telangana (2023) and Sikkim (2024).