BJP | New-gen leader

On the evening of December 14, a short message from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national media office announced Nitin Nabin, the low-key minister for public works in the new government in Bihar, as the party’s ‘working president’, a preliminary step before taking over the top post nationally. At just 46, he’ll be the youngest BJP president in history (breaking Nitin Gadkari’s record, who was 52 when he took over) when he takes over as the party’s national chief next year.

Born after the BJP was formally constituted in 1980, Nabin will also be the first millennial leader to enter/head the party’s national organisational core. For many outside the party (and inside it too), the name had little recall. Inside the BJP, though, the appointment brought clarity, as it had been some time coming—current party chief J.P. Nadda has been on one extension after another since his tenure ended in January 2023.

Sources say that for nearly a year and a half, the party leadership and the RSS had been circling the all-important question: who should steer the BJP’s organisational machinery as it prepares for a future that will, eventually, move beyond the centrality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi? The discussions produced many names, but consensus proved elusive. The Bihar leader’s appointment breaks that logjam in a way that few anticipated.

LOW-KEY PLAYER

Outside Bihar, Nabin has remained largely anonymous till now. During Shah’s tenure as party president (2014-2020), he was national general secretary of the youth wing, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha. Nabin first caught the eye of the national leadership when on assignment as election co-in-charge in Chhattisgarh in 2023. At the time, the Bhupesh Baghel-led Congress government appeared stable, and early assessments offered little by way of optimism.

Party officials involved in the campaign say Nabin was among the first to argue that the ground situation was shifting. He flagged signs of anti-incumbency and pressed for deeper organisational investment. His assessment eventually convinced Shah, who increased personal involvement and resource deployment in the state. The BJP’s surprise victory reshaped how the party evaluated its own internal feedback apparatus. Nabin was then given charge of Chhattisgarh for the 2024 Lok Sabha election, which the party again swept (10 out of 11 seats).

The Bihar leader first became an MLA at 26, winning the Patna West assembly seat left vacant after the death of his father, BJP veteran Nabin Kishor Prasad Sinha. He is now a five-time MLA, and has made Patna’s Bankipur assembly constituency one of the BJP’s strongest urban seats in the state (in the 2025 election, he defeated the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Rekha Kumari by over 51,000 votes). A Kayastha by birth, Nabin will also be the first BJP chief from Bihar and, in fact, eastern India. Kayasthas are a forward community, but in this case have two things going for them—they are not big in numbers (just 0.6 per cent in Bihar) and are not overtly feudal—which should aid his acceptability among the non-forward caste BJP cohorts in the heartland states.

Party insiders say Shah himself pushed Nabin’s name, after Sangh leaders had expressed reservations over some of the other short-listed names (which apparently included a few Union ministers). On December 12, the home minister met RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on the sidelines of a Veer Savarkar commemoration event in the Andamans to convey the decision about Nabin.

Sources say the confirmation has settled the party, especially as it is going through a churn internally to establish a post-Modi leadership. The BJP does have strong state satraps, such as Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath, his Maharashtra counterpart Devendra Fadnavis and Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Nabin’s biggest challenge will be to build a new-look BJP with a younger generation of colleagues while also maintaining the party’s heft with the government as well as Sangh affiliates. It’s a tough ask, as almost all the BJP ministers in Modi’s cabinet are of an older vintage, both in age and seniority. “It’s up to him to show his mettle when he gets controlchange the party’s impression from what it is now—the Modi-Shah-Nadda troika running the show,” says a BJP insider.

THE EASTERLIES

Nabin’s rise also adds a quiet regional note to proceedings. The BJP’s organisational leadership has long been dominated by figures from the west, north and central India. Elevating a younger leader from a state like Bihar broadens the profile without unsettling existing power structures. The BJP and the Sangh are actively expanding their influence in eastern India. In 2024, the party finally managed to oust Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha, and is now taking aim at West Bengal. Incidentally, Nabin speaks fluent Bengali, and the assembly election there is likely to be a baptism by fire for the young leader.

Meanwhile, party analysts say the choice of Nabin says a lot about how the party manages authority and succession. His elevation does not signal any redistribution of power at the top. The Modi-Shah duo still control party strategy; what will change, as a source put it, is the “texture of the middle layer”—the space where Nadda now oversees the formal structure and where decisions are translated into action. What is left unsaid is that, just like Nadda, in Nabin they have a leader who doesn’t command an independent mass following that could evolve into factional leverage. In that, the party seems to be going strictly by the playbook.