BJP national working president Nitin Nabin is set to be elected unopposed as the party’s national president on January 20, with no other contender expected to file nominations. The development signals a smooth leadership transition within the ruling party.
The election also marks a subtle but historic first for the BJP. Veteran leaders Lal Krishna Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi will not figure on the voter list for the presidential poll, breaking a tradition they have followed in every such election since the party’s formation in 1980.
Their absence is linked to pending organisational elections in Delhi, from where both are currently national council members. Earlier, Advani represented Gujarat as a council member during his tenure as the Gandhinagar MP, while Joshi represented Uttar Pradesh when he was the Kanpur MP. After stepping back from active electoral politics, both leaders were shifted to Delhi and later included in the BJP’s Margdarshak Mandal, a body of senior advisers.
Under the BJP constitution, national and state council members can be finalised only after organisational elections are completed at the booth, mandal, district and state levels. The rules further mandate that elections in more than half the states must be concluded before the process to elect the national president begins. With organisational polls still pending in Karnataka, Haryana, Tripura and Delhi, Advani and Joshi were consequently excluded from the voter list.
The BJP on Friday released the schedule for the election of its national president, with nominations slated for January 19 and the result to be declared the following day.
At 45, Nitin Nabin is poised to succeed outgoing party chief JP Nadda. Party sources say his candidature enjoys the backing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, echoing Nadda’s own ascent after serving as national working president before being elected unopposed in 2020.
A two-time Bihar minister and MLA from the Bankipur assembly constituency, Nabin is the son of late BJP leader and former MLA Nabin Kishore Prasad Sinha. With roots in the RSS, he is regarded within the party as a strong organisational leader with firm ideological grounding, underscoring a generational shift in the BJP’s top leadership.
