BJP working president J P Nadda appears set to be elected as its next national president on January 20, succeeding Amit Shah, with the party on Friday announcing the schedule for election to its top organisational post. In a statement, senior BJP leader Radha Mohan Singh, who is in charge of the party's organisational poll process, said that nominations for the national president's election will be filed on January 20, and a contest will take place the next day if required.
Party sources have said that Nadda, who has decades of organisational experience, is likely to be elected unopposed, as has been the convention in the organisation.
Top party leaders, including Union ministers, from across the country are expected to arrive at the BJP headquarters on Monday to file nominations in support of Nadda's candidature.
The election of a new president will bring to end incumbent Shah's tenure of over five and a half years during which the BJP expanded its footprints across the country like never before and enjoyed its best phase in electoral contests despite suffering a few setbacks in state polls.
With Shah joining the Modi 2.0 government as home minister, the BJP began the exercise for electing his successor as the party has the convention of 'one person one post'.
Radha Mohan Singh said the party's internal poll exercise was completed in 21 of its 36 state and Union territory units.
The BJP's constitution stipulates that its national president can be elected after at least half of the total state and UT units have completed their organisational election exercise.
Nadda was appointed as the party's working president in July last year in an indication that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted him to take over the party's helm from Shah.
The Himachal Pradesh leader also enjoys backing from the RSS, the Hindutva mentor of the BJP.
In the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha, he was in-charge of the BJP's election campaign in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, where the party faced a tough challenge from the grand alliance of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
The party won 62 out of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. Apart from handling crucial states for the BJP in the general elections, Nadda was a Cabinet minister in the first tenure of the Modi government and has been a member of the parliamentary board, the BJP's top decision making body.
