J P Nadda is BJP chief, but Amit Shah's shadow looms

Bringing curtains down for a very eventful five and a half years of Amit Shah era in party organisation officially, BJP on Monday elected its Working President J P Nadda as the new BJP President unopposed but the shadow of Shah, whose tenure saw the saffron party clock a record 303 performance in last Lok Sabha polls, loomed large from behind.

When Nadda, a Brahmin face from Himachal Pradesh takes over the reins of the party, he has no big challenge to build the organization, which has been turned into giant election machinery by Shah but he does have the daunting task of maintaining the momentum set in by his predecessor between and 2014 and 2018-19.

The challenge to Nadda is the emergence of a divergent election pattern for BJP since 2018---in elections for Lok Sabha and elections for states, where the party is not getting the same amount of support starting from Gujarat assembly polls of 2017- 2018, the first when Modi was not the Chief Minister face there.

BJP could barely manage a majority with substantially reduced numbers. In 2018 it lost elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh the states it won a big number of seats again in 2019 Lok Sabha polls. It again lost states like Maharashtra (owing to losing oldest ally Shiv Sena) and Jharkhand while it’s numbers came down in Haryana, where it had to find a post-poll ally to form the government.

Nadda also takes over as party chief a month after assembly election results were out in Jharkhand in which the BJP was decimated and a month before Delhi assembly polls where odds are heavily stacked against the BJP.

Nadda will serve for three years at the helm will over the party’s functioning during some crucial assembly poll including Delhi, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.

Greeting the Himachal Pradesh leader on being elected for the top job, Shah thanked party workers for their cooperation and asserted that the party will become stronger and expand further, setting new records under the leadership of Nadda. Modi spoke of the challenge of a party to run its affairs when it is in power and the danger of the party becoming a part of the government.

Recalling Nadda as an “old colleague” with whom he rode pillion on a scooter and worked together, the Prime Minister expressed confidence that the BJP will scale new heights during Nadda’s Presidency. He had effusive praise for outgoing party chief Shah saying he “does not think words can do justice to the contribution of Shah”.

Expressing gratitude to the party leaders for entrusting him the top responsibility, Nadda recalled his roots from a remote region of Himachal Pradesh and cited this as strength of the BJP in which leaders rise from a humble background to occupy top posts.

Nadda a soft-spoken person who reached the party’s top position, working his way up through the organization, has to live up to the high hopes Shah has set for the party.

Nadda's name was proposed by the three former BJP chiefs---Shah, Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari, along with several chief ministers.

Nadda was associated with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) from his college days and later served twice as President of Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha when Murli Manohar Joshi and L K Advani were party chiefs.

He was brought in the politics of the central BJP when Nitin Gadkari was party chief. Nadda, who became a party general secretary never looked back since then and served as Cabinet Minister for Health and Family Welfare and Minister of Forest Environment and Technology in Modi’s first tenure.

In 2019 when Nadda was not made a minister in Modi 2:0, there were broad indications of his being drafted a larger role, which was confirmed when he was made party’s working President in June 2019, setting the stage for his final take over as party chief six months later.