JP Nadda is elected National President of BJP

For JP Nadda, 59, the election of the eleventh president of the BJP culminates with a steady increase that began with student politics with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the USSR, for state policy in Himachal Pradesh and finally, since 2010, an important milestone in national politics.

Born of Krishna and Narain Lall Nadda on December 2, 1960, he studied early at Patna in St. Xavier and graduated from Patna College of the University of Patna. He became involved with ABVP while he was in Patna and continued this collaboration with the organization when he and his family moved to his native Himachal Pradesh after Mr. Nadda retired from the University of Patna.

Here, Mr. Nadda signed up for a law degree from the University of Himachal Pradesh, Shimla, and remained active in student politics, becoming the first student union nominated president of ABVP.

His organizational skills were recognized and he moved from the state to a more central organizational role as organizational secretary-general for the ABVP in Delhi between 1985 and 1989. These were exciting days not only for student movements but also for the BJP that was emerging from a bad performance in the 1985 Lok Sabha investigation to increase the tone of Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya. Nadda's Delhi season helped him fight his first Assembly polls in 1993, he won three Assembly polls in total and twice served as minister in the Himachal government.

However, it was in 2010 when the Union minister, Nitin Gadkari, was president of the party when he had his great opportunity in the organization. Gadkari, a contemporary of Nadda, gave his old friend a break when he reunited his team as president, making him the first national general secretary and then being elected to Rajya Sabha in 2012.

For Mr. Nadda, the role of the third wheel in the Modi-Shah equation will not only be a razor-tight walk, but it will also be difficult to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Mr. Shah, whose control over the organization of the party and meticulous electoral planning have acquired legendary proportions. Significantly, he faces two difficult polls immediately after being hired in Delhi and Bihar. The BJP hopes that its trouble-free promotion to the top spot at the party can be a harbinger of such a soft mandate there.

He was appointed minister in the first Modi government but returned to organizational work in the government's second career. His role as election director of Uttar Pradesh for the 2019 polls was highly appreciated and he soon managed to create a valuable and reliable space for him in the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah equation. This led him to be named the first president of BJP in June 2019, with the knowledge that he would be appointed after Shah's term expired, as happened in January 2020.

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