New Delhi, Jan 19 (PTI) MLA at 26 and president of the BJP at 45. It has been a storybook rise for Nitin Nabin who was elected unopposed as the party’s youngest chief on Monday, his elevation marking a generational shift in the BJP as it seeks to further strengthen its grip on national politics.
The low profile Nabin, a five-term MLA from Bihar and the state’s PWD minister, was appointed working president of the BJP on December 14. The announcement finally ending speculation over who would take over from veteran J P Nadda and also coming as a surprise for political circles, abuzz about the BJP’s stand-off with its ideological fountainhead RSS over the key appointment.
The unassuming Nabin, who will have to steer the party through a series of elections, including in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam, due in April this year, has hit the ground running.
Nabin, the first BJP chief from Bihar, has been on a tour of several states since his appointment as working president. The messaging has been direct and sharp.
Politics is not a 100-metre race, but a long marathon. It is not a test of speed, but of patience and stamina… that has been his underlying mantra to party workers.
“Our motto is to move beyond only thinking of winning the upcoming Assembly polls in West Bengal and other states. We have to unfurl ‘bhagwa (saffron)’ from panchayat to Parliament…..All of you should try to be full-time politicians unlike part-time politician Rahul Gandhi, who comes to Bihar during polls and goes to Germany for holidaying,” Nabin told party workers in Bihar.
“We do not go among the people just to win elections, we go to solve the problems of the people,” he added in Assam.
The upcoming state elections will be an opportunity for Nabin, who rose through the ranks in the Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP, to prove his mettle as organisational head of the BJP pyramid.
A common refrain in his interactions with state leaders has been to work with dedication to achieve the goal of Viksit Bharat as outlined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He got into mainstream politics in 2006 when the BJP tapped him to contest the Patna West assembly seat after the death of his father Navin Kishore Sinha, a veteran party leader with close ties to the RSS.
Nabin had to leave his studies midway to take to the world of politics, where he was once seen as an outsider.
Exactly 20 years later, he is viewed as a grounded leader and an organisation man.
Nabin, now 45, has five consecutive electoral wins from rechristened Bankipur.
According to a party leader, Nabin, a Kayasth by caste, is young but has a lot of experience in governance and working for the people and the organisation.
He impressed the BJP central leadership as the party co-in charge of the November 2023 Chhattisgarh Assembly elections, where BJP pulled off a surprise win by beating chief minister Bhupesh Baghel of the Congress.
In the Lok Sabha elections, he repeated the success formula. The BJP won 10 of the 11 seats in Chhattisgarh.
Born in Ranchi, now in Jharkhand, Nabin is married to Deepmala Shrivastava and the couple has a son and a daughter.
He has been known to win elections with huge margins, starting with the first bypoll he contested in 2006 which he won by nearly 60,000 votes. He won the latest one, earlier this year, by more than 51,000 votes.
Nabin is the latest link in the chain of BJP presidents — Atal Behari Vajpayee became the first BJP president after it was formed in 1980 and was succeeded by Lal Krishna Advani in 1986 who held the post for three terms.
Others who have held the position include Murli Manohar Joshi, Kushabhau Thakre, Bangaru Laxman, Jana Krishnamurthi, Venkaiah Naidu, Rajnath Singh (twice), Nitin Gadkari and Amit Shah. Nadda had been holding the post since 2020. PTI BJ SKU MIN MIN MIN
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