Why BJP-RSS talks deadlocked over BJP prez poll

Last week when the NDA authorised PM Narendra Modi and BJP President Nadda to select their vice presidential nominee, the overt message from the meeting was that the allies were entrusting Modi with the job.

But there was also a hidden message, which is that Nadda would continue as the party president at least till September 9, the date for the vice-presidential poll. Clearly, the BJP would find it hard to replace as party chief a man the NDA had chosen alongside Modi to find a suitable V-P candidate – even though the election for the party president was many months overdue.

In the saddle since January 2020, Nadda’s term has gone beyond the mandated three year term for a national president and is now well beyond the June 2024 deadline by when his extension was supposed to end.

The BJP’s parent organisation, the RSS, it is said, has different views on the matter. And so RSS-BJP talks on the issue have remained deadlocked on this critical issue of transition in the party.

The first round of talks between the two sides were held as far back as January 12, 2025, when the name of former Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar was discussed. There was no final outcome of this meeting and talks were paused in the wake of Delhi elections.

Informal parleys resumed once the BJP returned to power in Delhi after 27 years and have since lingered.

Sources indicate the RSS is keen on union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan but a mutual agreement remains elusive. Names of ministers like Bhupender Yadav and Dharmendra Pradan also continue to do the rounds.

After a nudge from the RSS, the BJP in early July worked aggressively to meet the constitutional requirement for conducting the president’s poll by electing new chiefs in half the party’s 37 units. But nothing happened.

The party is now attributing the delay to pending state chief polls in major states like UP, Haryana, Gujarat, Karnataka and Delhi even though it already has the constitutional mandate to replace Nadda.

The inordinate delay around this major reorganisational move continues to fuel talks of all not being well between PM Modi and Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat.

A Sangh source said the organisation had told the BJP about the ideal traits of a national president and has left the ball in the BJP’s court — notably, the RSS places organisational loyalty above personal loyalty as a key trait.

Beyond this, Sangh sources say, Bhagwat won’t disturb Modi.

The PM, they say, has fulfilled the Sangh’s core agendas – the abrogation of Article 370, consecration of the Ram Temple, fortification of national security and/or assault on left wing extremism (LWE).

The last two - national security and eradication of LWE - were in fact conveyed to the then home minister Rajnath Singh and then defence minister Manohar Parrikar when the duo came calling on Bhagwat in May 2015 on the first anniversary of the Modi government.

It is also under the Modi-led dispensation that the Sangh has moved into its new residential headquarters in Delhi. A plush high rise home, complete with three 12 storey towers, has been built at a cost of Rs 150 crore donated by Sangh cadres.

The insiders also point to Bhagwat and Modi’s personal ties and mention how the RSS chief had backed the former Gujarat CM as BJP’s prime ministerial face in 2013.

The prime minister too, for his part, has publicly described the RSS as an “organisation that taught him the purpose of life.”

On more than one occasion Modi has also proclaimed as his mentor a pracharak named Madhukarrao Bhagwat — the late father of Mohan Bhagwat.

On the contentious issue of Bhagwat’s call for public personalities to retire at 75, insiders say this comment may not be directed at Modi.

They cite the time when then RSS chief KS Sudarshan publicly advised PM Atal Behari Vajpayee to retire and make room for younger leaders. Vajpayee, turning down the counsel, said, “I am neither tired, nor retired.”

Sudarshan’s remarks were then dismissed as personal and Vajpayee stayed even when he was barely on good terms with the Sangh.