A file photo of Nitin Nabin at a felicitation programme in Patna.
Credit: PTI Photo
Nitin Nabin, who will take on the reins of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from J P Nadda on Tuesday, is the youngest ever to occupy the post of party president. He was elected unopposed to the post on Monday.
The appointment of 45-year-old Nabin signals a generational shift in the organisational leadership in the party as it seeks to further strengthen its grip on national politics, with key State elections this year and the next, including in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam, and Uttar Pradesh.
Nabin, a five-time legislator who has held multiple ministerial portfolios in Bihar, including Road Construction, Urban Development and Housing, and Law and Justice, was appointed working president of the BJP on December 14.
The announcement of the low-profile leader to the post ended speculation over who would take over from Nadda and also came as a surprise for political circles abuzz about the BJP’s stand-off with its ideological fountainhead Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh over the key appointment.
Nabin, a Kayasth by caste is the first BJP chief from Bihar, has been on a tour of several States since his appointment as working president.
The upcoming State elections will be an opportunity for Nabin, who rose through the ranks in the Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha, BJP's youth wing, to prove his mettle as the organisational head of the party.
He got into mainstream politics at the age of 26 in 2006 when the BJP tapped him to contest the Patna West Assembly seat after the death of his father, Navin Kishore Sinha, a veteran party leader with close ties to the RSS.
Twenty years on, he is viewed as a grounded leader and an organisation man. He has had five consecutive electoral wins from rechristened Bankipur constituency.
Nabin impressed the BJP central leadership as the party co-in-charge of the November 2023 Chhattisgarh Assembly elections, where the BJP pulled off a surprise win by defeating Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel of the Congress. In the Lok Sabha elections, he repeated the success formula and the BJP won 10 of the 11 seats in Chhattisgarh.
He has been known to win elections with huge margins, starting with the first bypoll he contested in 2006 which he won by nearly 60,000 votes. He won the latest one, in November 2025, by more than 51,000 votes.
Born in Ranchi, now in Jharkhand, Nabin is married to Deepmala Shrivastava and the couple has a son and a daughter.