Modi to lead nation beyond ’29: BJP junks PM’s retirement talk

The ruling BJP on Monday firmly dismissed speculation about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s retirement in 2025 saying it was inappropriate to discuss succession when the patriarch of the family was alive.

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Moments after Shiv Sena UBT’s Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Raut claimed PM Modi went to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters on Sunday to announce his retirement plan, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said Modi would again be the PM in 2029.

Raut claimed Modi’s successor would be decided by the RSS and that was the reason he went to the Sangh headquarters for a closed-door meeting. The Shiv Sena UBT leader also said the PM’s heir would hail from Maharashtra. Fadnavis offered a quick retort saying in Indian culture, it was inappropriate to talk about succession plans when the “father is alive”.

“This kind of discussion happens in Mughal culture. Time to discuss this has not come,” the Maharashtra CM said. He added Modi would continue to lead the country beyond 2029, the year of the 19th Lok Sabha elections.

Exiting politics at 75

After BJP’s 2014 LS win, veterans Atal Behari Vajpayee (90 at the time), LK Advani (87) and Murli Manohar Joshi (80) are dropped from parliamentary board and brought into Margdarshak Mandal

In 2019 LS polls, Advani (92), Joshi (85) & Sumitra Mahajan (76) opt out of LS race

In July 2016 Cabinet rejig, Modi drops Najma Heptullah, who had turned 76 in April

In 2017, MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan drops veteran Babulal Gaur (87) and Sartaj Singh (77) from Cabinet

Exceptions

UP BJP stalwart Kalraj Mishra (75), the oldest minister then, was retained ahead of 2017 UP polls

In 2021, BJP fields Metroman E Sreedharan (88) from Palakkad in Kerala Assembly polls

Senior RSS leader Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi, who heads the Hedgewar Smarak Samiti that looks after the memorial to RSS founder KB Hedgewar and second RSS chief MS Golwalkar, also denied knowledge of any plan for Modi’s retirement or succession. “I have no information about any such thing. I feel PM’s arrival and the gesture of laying the foundation stone for the Madhav Netralaya Centre building elevated the institute’s stature. His visit as a swayamsevak (RSS volunteer) to Reshimbagh on the occasion of Hedgewar’s birth anniversary was also very special,” Joshi said.

This is not the first time Modi’s retirement plans have become a subject of political slugfest. On the eve of the Lok Sabha elections, then Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was the first to claim that Modi, when he turned 75 on September 17, 2025, would hang his boots and pass the baton to his aide Amit Shah.

Claiming that the RSS and BJP had framed a rule that every leader would retire upon attaining 75 years of age, Kejriwal asked Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat if the rule would apply to Modi as it did to LK Advani.

The entire top BJP brass from Shah to party president JP Nadda had then junked talks of any such rule with Nadda saying the state of fitness was the sole requirement to deliver in public life.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who has twice served as the BJP chief, had told The Tribune in an interview on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections that the party had never drafted any rule to retire leaders at 75 years and a person’s service depended on his fitness.

“I was BJP president in 2009 and again in 2013 when the question of age of leaders was discussed. There is no age bar rule in the BJP constitution, there never was. Yeh ek fitoor hai bas (this is just gross irrationality),” Singh had remarked.

The retirement at 75 years debate had begun in 2019 after the BJP top guns sat out of the General Election following a nudge from the party.

Former Deputy PM LK Advani who had by then won the Gandhinagar LS seat in Gujarat six times announced retirement and was replaced in the segment by Amit Shah.

After Advani, former BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi said he would not contest from Kanpur in 2019 LS polls.

Former Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and former Indore MP also opted out of the LS race in 2019, saying she had done so to end speculation that she may not be fielded.