Who will replace J P Nadda? BJP’s National President race heats up
The BJP on Monday moved towards rolling out the exercise to have a new national president as the party elected chiefs in some states and is set to announce more on Tuesday that will put the requisite number of state heads at the helm for it to pick the replacement of J P Nadda. The BJP’s constitution requires the election of its presidents in at least 19 out of its 37 organisational states before the process to elect its national president begins, and the ruling party is set to cross the threshold on Tuesday.
V P Ramalingam and K Beichhua were elected BJP presidents of Puducherry and Mizoram, respectively, on Monday, while a single nomination for the post was filed in states like Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh, making their election a mere formality on Tuesday.
The BJP now has new state presidents, including some who were reelected, in 16 states, a figure that will rise on Tuesday. Some big states like Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh may also follow suit in the next few days.
The BJP has picked seasoned organisational men but with low public profiles in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in Ramchander Rao and P V N Madhav, respectively. Upset over the possible appointment of Ramchander Rao as the BJP’s Telangana President, the party’s firebrand MLA Raja Singh on Monday wrote to Union Minister G Kishan Reddy, saying that he is resigning from the primary membership of the saffron party. Reddy is presently the state chief, and the party high command is likely to announce a new successor on Tuesday.
Singh said the decision to appoint the new head of the party in the state has come as a shock and disappointment, not just to him, but to lakhs of Karyakartas, leaders, and voters who have stood by the party through every high and low. “With great sadness, I have decided to resign from the primary membership of the Bharatiya Janata Party. I request you, Shri Kishan Reddy ji, to kindly inform the Hon’ble Speaker of the Telangana Legislative Assembly that T Raja Singh is no longer a member of the BJP,” he said in the letter.
Maharashtra BJP working president and four-term MLA Ravindra Chavan is set to be elected president in place of Chandrashekhar Bawankule, a Cabinet minister in the BJP-led government in the state, while incumbent Uttarakhand president and Rajya Sabha MP Mahendra Bhatt is set to begin a new term. The development has brightened the prospect for the BJP to elect its new national president to replace Nadda, a Cabinet Minister in the Modi government, in July.
The BJP’s decision to replace its Lok Sabha MP Daggubati Purandeswari as its Andhra Pradesh president with a seasoned organisation man is driven by its leadership’s wish to build the party in a state where it is an ally of the ruling TDP but remains a minor electoral player. Purandeswari, the daughter of towering Andhra leader N T Rama Rao and sister-in-law of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, enjoys a certain stature due to her family background and long stint in politics during which she served as a Union minister in the UPA government when she was in the Congress.
In Uttarakhand, the party, having made a Thakur leader in Pushkar Singh Dhami as the Chief Minister, has opted for a Brahmin face in Bhatt as its president. Chavan is a Maratha, a powerful community in Maharashtra.
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