The prolonged delay over electing J P Nadda's successor possibly stems from the RSS leadership wanting a person who is at least equidistant from the Sangh as well as the Modi/BJP edifice, observes BJP-RSS watcher Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Although Union Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda is not the most powerful leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, he has quietly held the post of party president for the longest period -- although over a single term, courtesy extension of his first inning, which started 63 months ago in January 2020.
Ever since June 30 2024, when his extended term ended (in January 2023 he was granted an extension till June 2024 due to the Lok Sabha polls), finding and electing a substitute for Nadda should have been the uppermost item on the party's agenda. However, this was not given priority as a result of which the suspense over Nadda's successor continues unabated.
Since January, the deadline for the 'election' of a new president has been repeatedly 'postponed' by media hands in the absence of formal announcement by the party.
I would not blame fellow journalists because surviving on the BJP beat is extremely onerous because 'access' to information is only for the 'loyal' and even if any of this is shared with a scribe, the golden rule often is that this is solely for personal consumption, not writing.
Ever since Nadda was inducted into the council of ministers in June 2024, the principle of 'One-Man-One-Post', which the party has scrupulously adhered to, was also given the go by, and he continues to hold two offices without anyone displaying any urgency to end the violation of the principle on which the BJP paid great emphasis in the past.
For instance, in 1991 when Lal Krishna Advani became Leader of the Opposition, he immediately relinquished the post of BJP president and Dr Murli Manohar Joshi was appointed president by the party's national executive even though the formal process was duly gone through later.
Nadda's continuance as BJP president even after being inducted into the Union council of ministers was in contrast to the sequence of events in June 2019 when Amit Shah was inducted into the government by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Shah immediately relinquished the office of party chief and Nadda, who was not included in the ministry after serving between 2014 and 2019, was promptly made working president, the first time this ad hoc position was created by the party's national executive -- an evidence of rules and party statutes being at will post-2014.
Nadda's formal term as BJP president began in January 2020 after the due electoral process was completed by the BJP.
A similar appointment of another leader to replace Nadda was not made last June and this indicated towards an ongoing power struggle within the Sangh Parivar.
Given the fact that even though he continues holding the two posts for the past ten months, there is as yet no clarity on who will be the next party chief, there is a significant possibility that the issues which surfaced within the saffron camp in the run up to the Lok Sabha polls last year, have not yet been resolved completely.
Despite near-complete ideological unity on most political matters (not economic and diplomatic issues, it may be noted), it is not that the leaders of the Sangh Parivar do not have sharp disagreements.
From its inception a hundred year ago in September 1925, there were innumerable disagreements -- at times sharp and other occasions, mild -- within the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and between leaders of the ideological fountainhead and its affiliated organisations, including the political wing -- the BJP and its previous avatar, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh prior to 1980.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee's tenure as prime minister had begun with a dramatic late night visit by an RSS apparatchik (K S Sudarshan who became Sarsanghchalak soon).
He carried the diktat that Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan were to be excluded from the government, being sworn in the next morning, because they failed to get elected from their Lok Sabha constituencies.
The RSS and several affiliates, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch and Vishwa Hindu Parishad most notably, disagreed with the BJP and government often.
These divergences widened and eventually even the RSS put its weight behind the affiliates and stayed aloof during campaigning for the 2004 Lok Sabha election, as a result of which the BJP won fewer seats than the Congress and the rest is history.
On June 4, 2024, the results confirmed what was believed for long -- the RSS did not have its heart into campaigning for the BJP.
Sequential barbs by Mohan Bhagwat that followed, in which he did not take any names, but his intent was universally known -- criticism of Modi for promoting his cult.
The ups and downs of the Modi-RSS (Bhagwat) relationship requires separate treatment, but it needs to be reminded that the separation became inescapable after Nadda, certainly prompted by his boss, told the Indian Express newspaper that the 'BJP did not need the RSS anymore'.
The 2024 results, in which the BJP lost its parliamentary majority, brought the party and Modi face-to-face with the electoral capacity of the RSS.
As a placatory move, Nadda meekly attended the Samanvay Samiti (coordination committee) meeting of the Parivar in Palakkad last September and the first signs of truce were spotted.
In the assembly election in Haryana, the RSS was back to the grind, but with a difference -- after telling the BJP to scale down Modi's campaigns and no personalisation of politics. The same was the case in Maharashtra and again in Delhi this February.
The RSS had scaled down its disregard for Modi's BJP but not before endorsing the position of one of the PM's bete noire, Yogi Adityanath.
RSS Sarkaryavah Dattatreya Hosabale declared after an executive meeting in October that Yogi's 'batenge to katenge' was correct in the context of Hindus in Bangladesh.
It also sent signals that despite Modi and his group wanting to clip Yogi's wings, he wasn't going anywhere.
All was well it appeared and when a bird whispered in my ear in early March that Modi and Bhagwat would jointly address a public meeting in Nagpur on the occasion of Gudi Padwa and a foundation laying ceremony for a new wing of the RSS-connected Madhav Netralaya (named after the RSS' second Sarsanghchalak, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar), it became clear that the two had decided to put the past behind them and agree that they were mutually dependent, that each needed the other, a quantum shift from Nadda's brash assertion.
The Nagpur meet has not yet been followed by declaration of the one chosen to replace Nadda. The delay suggests that possibly there is still no consensus on the choice.
This means that Nadda may continue for some more time -- the BJP constitution states a person can be president for two consecutive terms of three years each.
Although not specified, Nadda can possibly remain in office and continue to hold the two offices (this is not part of the BJP constitution but merely a convention) at least till he completes six years in office -- January 2026 -- although by then he would have at the party's formal helm for six-and-a-half years, taking into account the period between June 2019 and January 2020 as working president.
But then, as seen previously, the BJP constitution is not the Indian Constitution and its violations are not viewed so seriously by the people.
From the time he became Gujarat chief minister, Modi insisted that the government must remain 'Sangh Mukt' (sans the RSS).
He allowed no interference in government functioning and did not hold consultative meetings which the local RSS hoped for. In time, Modi also made the BJP in Gujarat devoid of any RSS voice.
After his shift to the Centre, this was one of the features of the 'Gujarat Model' that was continued with Shah and Nadda being presidents from 2014 onward; there was little doubt regarding who wielded the levers to power within the party and government.
The delay in holding the charade of 'election' for the party presidentship possibly stems from the RSS leadership wanting a person who is at least equidistant from the Sangh as well as the Modi/BJP edifice, someone clearly more independent minded than what Shah and Nadda have been while in office.
Modi has never yielded any such power and has never worked since 2001 with a party chief who is not a loyalist.
Till any decision of the BJP president is not made public and the likely responses to it from the two quarters are not adequately assessed, it would be prudent to keep the chapter on the Modi/BJP-Bhagwat/RSS discord open. Clearly the last word will only be written only after that.
It is highly unlikely that after each have made moves to reach an understanding and publicly declaring 'dependence' on the other; Modi at the Nagpur public meeting spoke how the RSS shaped his political career, while Bhagwat emphasised that he was eager to listen to Modi's speech that followed his, the bitterness will return to levels witnessed in Bhagwat's public utterances between June-August last year.
But it would be early for commentators and the audience to lose interest and move elsewhere.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is an author and journalist based in Delhi-NCR.
His latest book is The Demolition, The Verdict and The Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project.
He is also the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff
© 2025