With the induction of Jagat Prakash Nadda in the Modi 3.0 Cabinet, speculation among party workers and leaders is about whom the party will fall back on as the next president. Nadda's tenure is ending by the end of this month. There is some possibility that the party could continue with Nadda for some time till the new party president is appointed.
Besides Nadda, the BJP also is set to kickstart soon the process of organisational changes with the launch of a fresh membership drive followed by an internal poll across States leading up to the election of a new party president.
In the run-up to the Lok Sabha, speculations were doing the rounds that former Haryana Chief Minister Manoharlal Khattar, Madhya Pradesh BJP chief Vishnudutt Sharma, Gujarat BJP president Chandrakant Raghunath Paatil, former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Union Ministers Dharmendra Pradhan and Bhupendra Yadav. Leaders like Khattar, Chauhan, Pradhan and Yadav have been inducted in the Cabinet.
After that several names are doing the rounds which include the party's general secretaries Vinod Tawde, Sunil Bansal, BL Santosh and Sharma. Tawde is from Maharashtra while Bansal is from Uttar Pradesh. Santosh is from Karnataka. Insiders said Vishnudutt Sharma is currently among the top contender for the post.
In 2014, when then party president Rajnath Singh became the Union Minister he passed on a baton to Amit Shah.
After Shah became the Union Minister in 2019, Nadda was appointed party president in June 2019. Nadda took over as BJP chief at a time when the party was witnessing vigorous challenges from a united Opposition in Assembly elections in several States amid signs that it needed to rework its electoral strategy.
Despite its overwhelming win in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP suffered several defeats in Assembly polls since 2018, except in Haryana where it formed a Government in an alliance with the Jannayak Janta Party.
Notably, during Nadda's tenure, Assembly elections took place in 29 States and Union Territories. Of them, BJP came to power in 16 States at a strike rate of 50 per cent. This include 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).
Sources in the BJP said the shift of some BJP State presidents to Governments, either at the Centre or State, besides its electoral setback in a key State like Uttar Pradesh is likely to bring new faces in their place, sources said.
The BJP's president in West Bengal, Sukanta Majumdar, has become a Union Minister while his Bihar counterpart Samrat Choudhary is a deputy Chief Minister in the State. Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini also heads the party in the State. Rajasthan BJP president C P Joshi is likely to be replaced to balance the party's social coalition as the state chief minister Bhajan Lal Sharma is a Brahmin like him.
The party's dismal show in the Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh has turned attention to its State president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary. BJP sources noted that organisational polls and changes were put on hold as the party focussed on the poll campaign.
The process will now begin in right earnest, more so after its below-par showing in some states during the polls. The BJP lost its majority in the Lok Sabha even though its alliance, NDA, comfortably crossed the magic figure of 272.
