Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Jan 17: Jagat Prakash Nadda will continue as the national president of the BJP to lead the party in the 2024 Parliamentary elections. The BJP national executive currently meeting in Delhi on Tuesday decided to extend the current term of Nadda, which was due to end this month, by one and half years till June 2024.
His extension was announced by the union home minister and the BJP’s senior election strategist Amit Shah who had preceded Nadda as the party national president till 2020 when he handed over the party mantle to Nadda on joining the Narendra Modi cabinet at the centre as the home minister.
Nadda’s extension was expected with elections to nine state assemblies lined up in the current year and the all imported battle for retaining the power at the centre due early next year. Besides that Nadda enjoyed the confidence of the prime minister, he had also registered good performance having successfully led the party in many state Assembly elections.
“The BJP national executive unanimously decided to extend party president JP Nadda’s term till June 2024,” Amit Shah announced at a press conference on the second and concluding day of the two-day national executive meeting which is being attended by the party’s union ministers, state chief ministers and around 350 leaders from across the country. “We are confident that under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Nadda, the party will win 2024 Lok Sabha polls with bigger mandate than 2019,” Mr Shah said.
Shah said Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, a former party president like him, moved the proposal of extending Nadda’s tenure. On the first day of the meeting, Nadda had exhorted party leaders to ensure its victory in all nine state assembly polls slated for this year. He said the Modi-led government has ensured India’s all-round progress and expressed confidence of the party’s victory prospects in the polls, including the Lok Sabha election.
Shah said “Among all the political parties in the country, the BJP is the one that is most democratically run. We hold elections according to the constitution of the party from the booth level to the presidential post,” he said. “Owing to the Covid pandemic, the membership drive that is carried out ahead of polls was affected and the elections at the booth level could not be held, therefore, the elections for the president’s post was also affected,” he said.
Nadda was first appointed as the party’s working president and then given a full three-year term. Referring to his tenure, Shah said it was under Nadda’s leadership that the party performed well in states such as Bihar, Maharashtra and also made gains in West Bengal.
BJP leaders agree that Mr Nadda enjoyed the confidence of Modi and his good performance has enabled the party to decide on an extension. Mr Shah today underscored that the BJP won many state elections under Mr Nadda’s leadership and expressed confidence that it would achieve a bigger mandate than 2019 in 2024. He also lauded Mr Nadda’s leadership during the pandemic, saying he connected the party organisation with the service of people. Besides, caste equations are also in favour of Mr Nadda.
Under the BJP constitution, a party president can get two consecutive terms of three years each. There is also a provision that after the organisational elections are held in at least 50 per cent of the state units, the process of election of the national president can start. Yesterday, Mr Nadda had underscored that party leaders must ensure victory in all nine state assembly polls slated for this year.
Nadda’s predecessor Amit Shah had also got an extension in order to spearhead the party’s preparations for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. It was only after those parliamentary elections were over that the organizational polls began and Mr. Nadda was elected unopposed, with Mr. Shah joining the Union Cabinet during Narendra Modi’s second stint as Prime Minister.
A seasoned organizational man who also shares warm ties with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leadership and enjoys the Prime Minister’s confidence, Nadda is seen to have maintained the organizational momentum and dynamism that the BJP was infused with under his predecessor.
Assembly polls will be held in a number of States— including Karnataka, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, besides quite a few in the north east— before the Lok Sabha elections.
