With Nabin as BJP working president, Sangh Parivar turns over a new leaf

A wave of jubilation swept the BJP headquarters in the Capital the moment Bihar minister Nitin Nabin was named the party working president this week. Energy around Sangh Parivar’s gambit of generational change was palpable. It soared as Nabin, the youngest-ever BJP chief, parked himself in Delhi to engage BJP workers, leaders and allies.

The majority that turned up over the week to greet the new leader was formed of young BJP cadres from all over India, each hopeful of a place at the pinnacle should they one day deliver on the goals saffron brotherhood sets for them.

Nabin, after all, ticked all boxes when tested against the gruelling criteria BJP and its mothership RSS set for the new party president. The selection was delayed by months as the Sangh laid down some non negotiables for its political wing, BJP, to follow when naming the new chief.

These non negotiables, as The Tribune gathered after speaking to several informed sources, were - the candidate must be below 50; he/she should not be a conventional politician identified with the New Delhi power circles; selection of the party president should be caste neutral to the extent possible; and the candidate should have wide-ranging experience of both parliamentary democracy and the BJP and Sangh organisation.

“There were only a handful that fit the bill. Out of the short list that was drawn up, only Nitin Nabin made the cut,” an RSS source said.

Nabin signals the RSS-mandated generational shift in the BJP best. At 45 years, he is the first BJP president to be born after the birth of the party in 1980.

This lore about the new BJP chief places him in the bracket of Narendra Modi, who was the first Indian prime minister to be born after Independence.

Youthfulness apart, Nabin met all other criteria the RSS and the BJP had laid down for the new chief.

He is a rank outsider to conventional Delhi-centred power politics, has rich experience of parliamentary democracy having served as a five-term MLA and a two-term minister in Bihar, commands vast organisational grounding in the Sangh Parivar having started as a Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha leader and lastly - within the general category Nabin belongs to the Kayastha community that forms less than one per cent of the Bihar’s population.

In this, he presents a picture of caste neutrality which the Sangh wanted in the new BJP president. Generational shift, the saffron leaders felt, would also send a strong signal to principal rival - the Congress whose chief Mallikarjun Kharge is 83 years old and is the Gandhi dynasty-backed candidate.

“The appointment had to send a message of hope to BJP cadres - hope that tomorrow they too can occupy the top post. It was also felt that while most key positions in the party and the government have to be weighed in the scale of region, caste and community, and balanced accordingly, there should be one post that should be above these considerations. BJP president was one such position,” said sources in the know of decision-making around the issue, with a senior leader saying some deputy CMs were also considered, but Nabin trumped them all.

Obscure though he may sound to those in Lutyens Delhi, Nitin Nabin is a leader well-known in the BJP and RSS circles.

His two greatest claims to fame have been - as in-charge of the BJP in Sikkim he engineered the alliance with the SKM in 2019 and together the NDA ended Sikkim Democratic Front chief Pawan Kumar Chamling’s 25-year rule in the state in 2019; in 2023 as co-incharge of the BJP Chhattisgarh, Nabin led a political strategy that handed the ruling Congress under Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel a defeat when no one was expecting. Chamling, when he lost, was the longest serving CM in India.

And now, the BJP has tasked Nabin with the election strategy ahead of key polls in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala and Assam next year.

Six days after he was named, Nabin has already hit the ground running. He addressed programmes in poll-bound Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on Saturday and Sunday, while Congress star campaigner Rahul Gandhi was yet to return from Germany.

In the New Year, the BJP will formally appoint Nitin Nabin as the full-time president, once constitutional election process is concluded.

And then, as an insider puts it, the process of rejuvenation and reinvention under the youngest BJP president will begin.

The goal, this source said, was not immediate. It was 2047.