New Delhi: Nothing reflects as poorly on the state of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as much as the multiple permissions that its national president J.P. Nadda has received to continue as the party’s national president beyond his three-year tenure.
Once known for its robust internal democratic structure and conventions, the saffron party is currently struggling to conduct its presidential elections on time, because of which its national executive has allowed Nadda to retain his position well beyond after his term ended in January 2023.
Nadda, who was appointed as the “working president” after the BJP stormed to power in 2019, was formally elected as the national president in January 2020. According to party rules, he could have had two terms but the party’s national executive decided against giving him another term, citing that his responsibilities in the Union government was more important for the party. Yet, the party has failed to elect a new president and has instead deferred the decision by giving multiple extensions to Nadda since January 2023.
In August 2024, party leaders told the media that its election process had begun and a new president was likely to be elected by December 2024. The deadline was then extended to February 2025 and further pushed to March 21, according to latest reports.
Polls in state units incomplete
Presidential elections in the saffron party is preceded by an organisational overhaul, according to the party’s constitution. Organisational polls from mandals and districts to full state units need to be conducted ahead of the formation of an electoral college that eventually elects the party president. The party must complete organisational polls in at least 50% of its 36 state units to fulfil the conditions of the electoral college.
A large part of the delay, apart from the leadership’s general indifference towards organisational elections, is that the party has been able to finish organisational polls in only 12 of its state units. This means that it still needs to have state presidents in eight units to elect a new national president.
Although mandal and district elections are over in most states, factionalism in different state units has prevented timely elections of state bodies. B.L.Santosh, one of the national general secretaries, has been struggling to keep the party infighting in different states under control, so that a new president can be elected.
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The infighting has troubled the party so much that it has been able to complete its organisational elections mostly in small state units – Chhattisgarh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Sikkim, Chandigarh, Goa, Jammu & Kashmir, Lakshadweep, Ladakh, Meghalaya and Nagaland. Rajasthan, where Madan Rathore was re-elected as the state president, is the only big Hindi heartland state where the BJP has been successful in completing its internal elections.
In units like Chandigarh and Chhattisgarh, Jatinder Pal Malhotra and Kiran Singh Deo were re-elected, while BJP changed its presidents for Assam and Goa. Damu Naik, belonging to the influential Bhandari community, was elected as the Goa president, and Dilip Saikia, an old RSS hand, was brought in to infuse new energy in Assam. Similarly, Ravindra Chauhan, a Maratha leader, was appointed as the Maharashtra president, seemingly to counter criticism about the Brahmin face and chief minister Devendra Fadanvis’s iron-handed control over the party unit.
However, the scenario is much more complicated in electorally important states like Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Kerala and Telangana. Reportedly, multiple lobbies in Uttar Pradesh are working to get their representative elected, which led Santosh to send warning signals to the state unit in January 2025 to complete organisational polls immediately. However, the state continues to face a stalemate amidst heightened rivalry within the party.
The faction-ridden unit of Madhya Pradesh faces a similar crisis in choosing V.D. Sharma’s successor as the state president. Sharma has already completed his five-year tenure.
Union Minister and BJP National President J.P Nadda with former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Jairam Thakur and state BJP President Rajeev Bindal during a programme, in Bilaspur, Thursday, March 6, 2025.
In Haryana, rivalry between the incumbent president, Mohan Lal Badoli, and Anil Vij has delayed the polls. Failure to build consensus over a name amidst heightened tensions between warring factions is the reason for such delay in Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi.
The party also has to choose a new president in the poll-bound Bihar, where appointment of Dilip Jaiswal as the state president is yet to be officially notified.
While Himachal Pradesh’s unit has suffered because of competitive lobbying between senior leader Jairam Thakur and Rajeev Bindal, Karnataka has been on the boil because of intense opposition to B.Y. Vijayendra’s leadership by a camp led by Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, who is well-known for his lack of restraint.
In Odisha, where the BJP won the assembly elections, the organisational elections haven’t begun as different factions are looking to have their leaders at the top, especially when the party will be enjoying the perks of power.
Similar problems have arisen in Telangana, where no consensus candidate has emerged among the 19 newly-elected district presidents. The party’s organisational polls have been similarly marred by ground-level infighting in different districts of West Bengal, where a new president has to be chosen after Sukanta Majumdar was inducted into the Union cabinet.
‘Such long delay is unprecedented’
In August 2024, when the BJP leadership announced that a new president will be at the helm by December 2024, some leaders, after a “samanvay” meeting between the RSS and the BJP in Kerala’s Palakkad, had said that the decision to appoint a new president was delayed because of the party’s focus on impending assembly elections in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand.
Even before this, other leaders had claimed that the party’s top priority was to push its current organisation to invest its energy in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls that were held in between April-June. The decision to extend Nadda’s tenure was, therefore, seen in this light.
Infighting could also have played a role in delaying the presidential polls, it appears now. This delay, on the other hand, has bought the BJP crucial time to contain internal dissent.
A former member of the BJP and a close observer of the party, Sudheendra Kulkarni, told The Wire, “The long delay in electing the BJP’s new president is unusual and unprecedented.”
“Of course, the election to the party’s highest office has always been without a contest since the BJP’s inception in 1980. This is because the party leaders, in back-room consultations with the top RSS leadership, always arrive at a consensus on the matter. This has unfailingly paved the way for smooth transition in the past. But, this time around, the consensus seems to have eluded [them] so far. Ultimately, the BJP will elect its new president unanimously, as has been the norm,” he said.
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While Kulkarni’s remarks are on point, observers also note that the party has evolved entirely into a one-man show after Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed power. As the party is afflicted with cult politics and a simultaneous iron-handed approach towards any form of dissent at the national level, the state leaderships of the party have been venting out their anguish in their pocket boroughs, as is reflected in the way organisational polls have unfolded. While nobody seems to question Modi-Shah’s leadership, they have also not restrained themselves against some of their decisions at the state level.
Former BJP minister in the Union government and now a trenchant critic of the Modi-led organisation, Yashwant Sinha believes that the BJP’s unprecedented successes under Modi’s leadership has come at the cost of its vibrant internal democracy.
“The BJP valued its internal democracy. L.K. Advani used to proudly say that BJP was a party with a difference. But now, BJP has been reduced to a one-person party. Who will be the next president doesn’t really matter. I don’t know when the last national executive meeting was held in recent months. They are supposed to be held every quarter. When we were in the government, the BJP national executive used to meet frequently, and also used to pass resolutions independently of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government,” Sinha told The Wire.
Sinha said that he was not surprised that the BJP has failed to conduct its organisational polls in a timely manner. “In my former constituency Hazaribagh, the BJP unit has not been able to complete even its membership drive – the first step of organisational polls – despite three to four extensions,” he said.
“I don’t know when the national council meeting was held last. It used to be an important organ of the party and was supposed to be held every six months or once a year. The newly-elected BJP president’s first address to the party used to be in a national council meeting. Not only the institutions of our democracy have been stifled under the current government, the democratic institutions within the BJP have also been stifled.
He said in case of the party eventually failing to elect its ground-level leaders in different states, the party leadership is most likely to nominate all district and state presidents, as the rules allow such a step.
“However, it is a very sorry state of affairs. I am distressed that this party has fallen so low,” Sinha said.
