After five years of hard organisational work during which he transformed the BJP into a political behemoth, Amit Shah is all set to leave the party’s president post, creating a void which not many within the BJP can easily fill up. However, JP Nadda, Health Minister in the NDA I, has emerged as the front runner for the post.

The name of Dharmendra Pradhan was also doing the rounds as Shah’s replacement, but  after he took oath as a Cabinet Minister decks seemed to be clear for Nadda’s coronation as the party president. Besides being a trusted lieutenant of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, Nadda enjoys the support of the RSS.

A Rajya Sabha member, fifty-nine-year-old Nadda is  Parliamentary Board Secretary of the BJP. His elevation as party president will help the BJP ward off criticism that the party has been hijacked by two leaders from Gujarat. Since Nadda is a Brahmin, it will also help the BJP reach out to the upper castes.

Nadda is known for his proximity to the party top leadership, which had entrusted him with the challenging task of overseeing party’s Uttar Pradesh performance in the recent Lok Sabha polls.

The new BJP chief will straight away face the challenge of leading the party to victory in State Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana in September and also deal with the instability faced by the Congress-JD(S) regime in Karnataka.

Nadda did his schooling form St. Xavier’s School, Patna and his graduation from Patna College. His father was a renowned professor in the Patna university those days. He completed his LLB from Himachal Pradesh University. A three-time MLA and a member of the Rajya Sabha from the hilly States, Nadda had joined the Modi Cabinet in 2014 and continued for all of five years. At the age of 31, Nadda had become national president of BJP Yuva Morcha in 1991. He has been BJP’s national general secretary since May 2010.