why-is-bjp-taking-so-long-to-appoint-new-a-president

Bharatiya Janata Party president JP Nadda is on an extended term since January 2023. It is more than two-and-a-half years since he completed his term as the president and the party still has not been able to appoint his successor.

 

Nadda was appointed BJP president in January 2020. His three-year term was to complete on January 19, 2023. However, his term was extended till June 2024 to complete the General Elections. The party extended his term till December 2024. Most part of the year 2025 has already passed and the BJP is yet to zero in on its next president.

 

This is quite unprecedented for the BJP where appointments to the party positions are mostly done on time. There are no permanent positions in the BJP. Nadda is already in his seventh year. He completed six years in office, first as working and full-time president in June this year. That means he has practically already completed even his second term, if he had officially been granted that.

 

There is a lot of curiosity among the political circles as to why the BJP is delaying the appointment of its new president. Even the 2024 General Elections, for which Nadda’s term was extended, are long past. The party government is perfectly in the saddle. The BJP does not have any other option but to appoint a new president. By the time Nadda is replaced, he would already complete more than six years in office, including about one-and-a-half years he remained working president when the then BJP president Amit Shah became Union Home Minister.

 

The BJP is a political behemoth. It is the largest political party in the world, with a membership of about 18 crore people in 2025. It entered into the Guinness Book of World Records in 2015 when it crossed the 100 million (ten crore) mark in membership. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a distant second with about 100 million members, followed by the Indian National Congress, the principal opposition party in India, with about 55 million members.

 

The party has gone from strength to strength since 1984, when it was reduced to just two members in the Lok Sabha. It has continuously won three General Elections since 2014, winning absolute majority of its own twice. Except for a mild aberration when it missed the 272 mark in 2024, and fell short by 32 seats, everything seems to be going quite well for the party. It has exclusive governments in 14 states and in alliance with NDA partners in five more.

 

With such a humongous size, managing the BJP is not an ordinary task. Unlike the Congress and other family-run political parties, in the BJP, the party president holds considerable power and influence despite the firm grip of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. But they also exert subtle control only and never make things obvious.

 

Also read: RSS gets well-deserved acknowledgement from Modi

 

With such huge expansion, as the party has reached every nook and corner having footprints everywhere, including in states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which were considered to be beyond its reach, the party’s challenges are also enormous. In the process of expansion of its base, at times there are certain compromises to be made, which the party has not resisted, like aligning with the People’s Democratic Party in Jammu and Kashmir, a party completely ideologically opposed to the BJP.

 

During the last decade, as the party continues to remain on the ascendancy, there has been a massive influx of leaders from other political parties, particularly the Congress. Current Assam Chief Minister Hemanta Sarma Biswa is originally from the Congress. There are few more sitting and former chief ministers who have come from other parties. This has not only led to bickering among the party’s traditional cadres and leaders – that outsiders are getting preference and gaining prominent positions – but there is also an apprehension about “ideological saturation”.

 

As falsely rumoured, there is no “conflict or confrontation” between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (the RSS) and the BJP. The BJP derives its entire ideological and cadre strength from the RSS. Had it not been for the RSS support, things might have been quite different and difficult for the BJP in the 2024 General Elections. Those suggesting that there is “some conflict” between the two, forget that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has remained a full-time ‘pracharak’ of the RSS. Even Amit Shah has his original association with the RSS.

 

The RSS is focused on retaining the core ideology that has been the foundation of the party like nationalism and Hindutva. It is not that the “current BJP leadership”, which of course includes Modi and Shah, has strayed away from this ideology. But there is a difference between an organisation like the RSS and the government of a democratic country like India, with so much diversity on multiple counts that Modi is heading.

 

It goes without saying that anyone who will be appointed the next BJP president will have RSS roots. There can be no doubt about that. Only difference can be about the approach to handling the affairs of the party. The RSS apparently wants that the next president must not only be ideologically committed, which everyone will be anyway, but must also “be seen to be committed” to the core ideology of the Sangh. The RSS is not averse to the BJP inducting a lot of leaders from other parties, including those ideologically opposed to it, but it will never accept anything that may suggest a compromise on core ideology.

 

Right now, efforts are on to draw a balance and evolve a consensus to choose the president, who will be ideologically committed and acceptable to all within the ‘Sangh Parivar’.