Dear reader,
Back in 2019, when there was intense speculation on who would replace the all-powerful Amit Shah as the BJP party president, the absence of Health Minister J.P. Nadda from the dais when leaders of the Modi 2:0 dispensation were being sworn in on May 30, prompted me to wonder, aloud on X, whether he was in line for the job. The pinned post is still on my timeline. And Nadda is still the BJP president.
Nadda was, of course, one among many others whose name was up for speculation but very few believed that the low-profile Brahmin leader from Himachal Pradesh would really be considered for the top job. I was no different. It was a tukka (wild guess) that worked.
After being made the party’s national working president in June 2019, Nadda was appointed president (11th) in January 2020 and has continued to helm affairs since then. But, as they say, a low profile is the best profile in politics, where personality clashes can mar your career permanently. The soft-spoken Nadda hardly ever came in the way of Shah taking key decisions in party affairs, especially election-related ones like alliances and seat-sharing.
In 2024, similar speculation reins on who will be the next BJP president, but this time no hints were dropped at the Modi 3:0 swearing-in. The only thing that can be said safely this time is that even MoSha (Narendra Modi and Amit Shah) might not be sure about who it is. Since 2014, when the Modi government first came to power, it has been said that these two men control the party with an iron grip. Now, political analysts say, the RSS, which earlier kept off such party exercises (at least in public view), has stepped in to restore a sort of balance in the party’s power equations.
Prime Minister Modi’s tenure has seen a personality cult growing around him, with all three key components—vyaktitva, vichardhara, and sangathan (personality, ideology, organsiation)—being subsumed within the one man, as seen in the coinage of words like “Moditva” and slogans like “Modi Hai to Mumkin Hai”. The need, therefore, to de-hyphenate the government from the party is being underlined in the Sangh Parivar in a hush-hush manner.
But a decision of this sort is not easy, given that the ideal Swayamsevak Modi has taken the BJP to new heights and given the RSS a fresh lease of life after they were pushed into the background by the defeat of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government in 2004 and the ensuing financial crunch.
At any rate, a number of names are being floated—Vinod Tawde, Sunil Bansal, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Manohar Lal Khattar, Devendra Fadnavis, Vasundhara Raje, and even Sanjay Joshi, widely known to be Modi’s bête noire—but the likelihood of a known MoSha detractor like Joshi making it is far-fetched to say the least.
There are as many names as speculations. Some months ago, a series of media reports speculated about Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s differences with Amit Shah and the possibility of Adityanath being shuffled within the party and his detractor, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, being made party president. Both, however, remain in their jobs. And the talk has died down.
Party insiders say that the RSS is interested in some assertive and independent person (who is not in awe of Modi-Shah) taking on the party’s top job. This also seems evident from recent assertions by RSS leaders and the back-to-back meetings between RSS and BJP leaders.
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s comment in Pune in early September, “We should not consider ourselves God. Let people decide if there is God in you”, or his remark in Nagpur in June, after the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, that “a true sevak maintains decorum while working… There is no arrogance. Only such a person has the right to be called a sevak”, have been interpreted by many as him chastising the BJP’s top brass.
But the Sangh has a knack of resolving any battles in the Parivar in a way that does not dent the overall interests of the family at large, and the BJP too may not escalate matters beyond a point. “We solve family matters like family matters. We don’t discuss such issues on public platforms,” was the succinct remark of RSS’ Akhil Bhartiya Prachar Pramukh, Sunil Ambekar when his attention was drawn to Nadda’s comment in May that the BJP had grown away from relying on the RSS to becoming self-sufficient.
In all likelihood, therefore, the decision will be made by consensus rather than confrontation. Apart from the power balancing, a key challenge before the Sangh Parivar is to counter the perception fuelled by the opposition of their dispensation being anti-reservation. Despite RSS and BJP leaders seeking to clear the air on the issue, there is a trust deficit on the issue among voters, which has created problems for them in the past.
There is a strong buzz that the BJP’s new chief may be someone from an OBC community to blunt the Congress’ caste census pitch and to pacify regional OBC satraps in UP and Bihar, which together send 120 members to the Lok Sabha. And, mind you, anybody heading the BJP for the next few years will be heading a party with 240 seats and not 303 as in 2019 or 282 as in 2014. The task of reviving the party so that it gets a simple majority (272) on its own in 2029 will be the challenge, aggravated due to the growing anti-incumbency.
But wait, this is to speak logic. And logic is the one casualty we have repeatedly seen when trying to decipher the political decisions of the BJP during the Modi-Shah reign. Let me, therefore, hold my horses. I will do well to remember what American actress Angelina Jolie once said, “When I get logical and I don’t trust my instincts, that’s when I get in trouble.”
Who do you think is the dark horse in the running for BJP president? Write and tell us.
Until my next newsletter,
Anand Mishra | Political Editor, Frontline
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