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Why JP Nadda is BJP working president — ‘never annoys anyone’ & organisational skills

J.P. Nadda began his political journey in Patna, rose through the ranks in Himachal Pradesh, served in the first Modi cabinet, and is now BJP working president.

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Shimla: Jagat Prakash Nadda’s admirers call him a man of destiny, while rivals bring up his strong RSS connections as well as loyalty to the last three BJP presidents — Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari. Either way, the result is the same — Nadda has risen to the top of the BJP tree, having been named the party’s working president Monday.

Nadda began his political journey during the Jayaprakash Narayan-inspired students’ movement in Patna, Bihar. He rose through the ranks to serve the Himachal Pradesh government twice as cabinet minister, then Rajya Sabha MP, and then the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare in the previous Narendra Modi cabinet.

However, he was kept out of Modi’s second cabinet when it was formed last month, giving rise to speculation that he was in for leadership of the party, especially since the BJP’s national president, Shah, had become union home minister.

The working presidency seems to be a reward for Nadda’s work as the BJP’s poll in-charge of Uttar Pradesh — he ensured the party and its ally won 64 of the state’s 80 seats in the Lok Sabha elections this year.

Foray into politics

As a student leader at Himachal Pradesh University in 1983-84, Nadda is remembered as someone who knew how to please everyone.

“It’s to his credit that he built up the ABVP cadres. He also won the Students’ Central Association (SCA) president’s post as an ABVP candidate, though we still believe Students Federation of India (SFI) candidate Inder Rana won but Nadda and his team fixed the poll. Nadda and Rana later shared the post for six months each as a compromise formula,” Rakesh Singha, CPI(M) MLA and a former student leader, told ThePrint.

After university, Nadda went to Delhi and became a full-time RSS worker. He returned to Himachal in 1988-89 and was appointed the BJP’s general secretary in the state and was made in-charge of the Lok Sabha poll in Kangra, where he helped Shanta Kumar win the Congress-dominated seat by a big margin.

By 1990-91, Nadda became national president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP.


Also read: Appointment of JP Nadda shows BJP leaders are running the party like Congress


Gaining prominence in Himachal

In the 1993 assembly polls, Nadda contested his first election from Bilaspur, and won at the peak of an anti-BJP wave. Since prominent BJP leaders, including Shanta Kumar and Kishori Lal, had lost the elections and veteran Jagdev Chand died before taking oath as MLA, Nadda — then in his early 30s — took the mantle of leader of the opposition in the assembly.

“It was his destiny to get the leader of the opposition post in his very first term as MLA,” a former BJP minister said on the condition of anonymity.

Nadda has never been a mass leader, unlike the BJP’s Himachal Pradesh chief ministers Shanta Kumar and Prem Kumar Dhumal. And yet, it is also well-known that Nadda had chief ministerial ambitions, as far back as 1998. Modi, who was then the party in-charge for Himachal, had instead chosen Dhumal to lead a coalition backed by former Congress minister Sukh Ram.

Dhumal made Nadda the health minister, but his tenure was mired in controversy — some medical purchases resulted in three vigilance FIRs against three successive directors of health services under Nadda.

When the Congress, led by Virbhadra Singh, returned to power in 2003, Nadda was among a dozen prominent ministers to lose the election.

In 2007, when the BJP came back to power under Dhumal, Nadda was re-elected to the assembly and was made minister for forests and the environment.

Turning point

In 2010, Nadda was handpicked by then-BJP chief Nitin Gadkari as national general secretary, marking the beginning of a new phase in his political career.

Nadda was not getting on well with Dhumal, and the elevation, which brought to the fore his organisational skills, proved a blessing in disguise for him. He subsequently got elected to the Rajya Sabha, and became a cabinet minister when Modi stormed to power in 2014.

When the BJP won the Himachal assembly polls in 2017, Nadda was the front-runner for the chief ministership, but Modi and Shah didn’t approve of his return to state politics. The party high command chose five-time MLA Jai Ram Thakur as CM with RSS approval, despite Thakur himself lobbying for Nadda to take the chair.

‘Never annoys anyone’

A senior BJP leader in Himachal Pradesh said Nadda’s biggest strong point remains that he never exceeds his brief.

“He never annoys anyone, within the party or outside, and has good communication skills,” the leader said.

Nadda has often called himself “lucky” to have risen through the ranks in the BJP, and attributed it to the “trust” the senior leadership has placed in him.

“I am basically an organisational man — that is my biggest strength,” the 58-year-old Nadda has said in the past.

But Himachal BJP president Satpal Satti said: “His organisational skills are marvellous, aptly suiting his personality. His appointment is historic for a small state like Himachal.”

Nadda’s critics allege that he is not a hard-working man, with CPI(M) MLA Singha adding: “He is just a sweet, sober and smiling face. He’s not a fighter.”

Nadda’s appointment as the BJP’s working president ahead of assembly polls in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand later this year is significant, because it will test his biggest strength — organisational skills.


Also read: RSS sends tacit message to BJP: Deliver on promises which brought you to power


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