J.P. Nadda: Journey From ABVP to Working President of BJP

Prior to Narendra Modi's rise in theBharatiya Janata Party, not many outside the state of Himachal Pradesh knew whoJ.P. Nadda was. His tenure as the Union health minister during Modi's firstterm can hardly be called eventful.

The only prominent announcement to come out of his ministry was the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a federal health insurance policy for the poor that his ministry oversaw. However, as the prime minister himself hogged all the limelight for the much-touted scheme, Nadda was forced out of the public glare.

When the demure, soft-spoken and media-shy Nadda took over the reins of the BJP as the "working president", soon after the newly-anointed Union home minister Amit Shah relinquished his position – as part of the saffron party's 'one person, one post' doctrine – in June 2019, party insiders felt that the so-called regime change was bare of any significance.

Nadda isn't considered a match for Shah atall. With Shah's aggressive and action-packed stint of nearly six years as theprecedent, most political observers feel that Nadda's current reputation as themost trusted lieutenant of the Modi-Shah duo, more than any other qualitativeaspect, earned him the coveted position that at a different time and age wouldhave befitted a host of BJP heavyweights.

On Monday, Jagat Prakash Nadda finally got rid of that odd prefix "working" and was elected as the official full-time president of the BJP, unopposed. He joined the line-up of Sangh Parivar's top leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Kushabhau Thakre and others. Yet, Nadda is likely to remain in the shadows of the dominant Modi-Shah duo in the days to come. As working president, Nadda addressed BJP workers across the country quite frequently, inaugurated multiple events, worked behind the scenes to expand and organize the party, and braved electoral reverses in Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and Haryana. But he still managed to evade scrutiny, with the domineering presence of Shah around.

Nadda's journey through the party

In his first speech as president, Naddaspoke about how the BJP is the only party in which a commoner like him fromHimachal Pradesh could rise through the ranks to the top. However, thosefamiliar with BJP's functioning would know that there is a qualitativedifference between his appointment and that of his predecessors. Given thecurrent state of affairs in the party, the reserved Nadda was tactical enoughto turn his disadvantage into a blessing. He has in fact risen through theranks in the BJP because of his extraordinary consistency in remaining out ofthe public view.

Nadda, now 59, was born in Bihar where hestudied until college. At Patna University, he associated himself with theAkhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the students' wing of Rashtriya SwayamsevakSangh. He gained prominence in the anti-corruption JP movement and was electedas secretary of the students' union in the 1977 polls. After having decided toshift his base to his home state, he went on to lead the students' union of theHimachal Pradesh University as a law student, after having defeated theCommunist Party of India (Marxist)-backed Students Federation of India (SFI)for the first time in 1984.

He held leadership positions in the ABVP and Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha until 1993 when as a 33-year-old he first contested and won assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh. He repeated his wins in the Bilaspur constituency in 1998 and 2007 and held ministries in two BJP governments in the state. Gradually, he emerged as the prime contender of chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal; however, in 2010 Nadda resigned as a minister over differences with the chief minister. His national innings started when then BJP president Nitin Gadkari brought him to New Delhi first as the national general secretary of the party and then getting him elected as a Rajya Sabha MP in 2012. Since then, he has worked his way up to Modi-Shah's good books. It is said that he played an important role in BJP's huge electoral successes in Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 and 2019 parliamentary polls.

Nadda was accused of covering up multiplecorruption scams worth Rs 7,000 crore in the All India Institute of MedicalSciences (AIIMS) during his stint as the health minister. The most notablecontroversy was when media reports claimed that Nadda attempted to hush up theCentral Bureau of Investigation investigation into a Rs 3,700 crore corruptionscam related to engineering tenders at AIIMS. Opposition parties, especiallythe Aam Aadmi Party, accused him of shielding the prime accused VineetChaudhary, the then AIIMS deputy director who as a Himachal Pradesh cadre IASofficer had worked closely with Nadda.

Nadda had reportedly written several letters between May 2013 to June 2014 to his predecessor in the health ministry to drop cases against Chaudhary. He also wanted Indian Forest Service officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi, who as the then chief vigilance officer of AIIMS, blew the whistle on at least 200 corruption cases during his deputation at AIIMS since 2012.

Nadda's understated organizational skills have finally helped him land the top post, while Thakur, who has never hesitated to show his ambitious side, has apparently been sidelined. With the Delhi assembly elections lurking around the corner and Bihar assembly elections up later this year, Nadda has his task cut out. Yet, the road ahead for Nadda may not be as easy as it had been for him in the party until now.