Opinion BJP’s new president should listen to voices across the aisle

Nitin Nabin has formally taken charge as the BJP’s new national president a little over a month after he was named its working president, with the surprise of his previous anointment yet to fade. The elevation of the five-term MLA from Bihar is in keeping with the functioning of the BJP high command, which revels in overturning expectations. It also wraps its decisions in symbolism. The BJP’s 12th president, Prime Minister Narendra Modi underlined, is a “millennial”, who represents a generational shift in the party. For the BJP, this is also a moment to underline its credentials as a party in which the ordinary karyakarta can travel to the top. That said, owning his rise will also be Nabin’s first challenge. He must claim the space he has been given, and make it his. And he must do this while dealing with an array of larger challenges.

Important state elections lie round the corner. Except Assam, where it is the incumbent, the BJP is faced with states where it has not yet met with the success it desires, where it has room to expand, but also hurdles to cross. The party is enormously well-resourced — according to its annual audit report, its election expenditure has seen a staggering rise, from Rs 1,352.92 crore in 2019-20 to Rs 3,335.36 crore in 2024-25, even as its competitors lag far behind — but it will also need to manage the fallout of its relentless drive to expand. Recent campaigns have highlighted a predicament — while opening its doors wider, it must maintain its ideological boundedness. Moreover, in the foreseeable future, beyond the impending state elections, or the Lok Sabha polls in 2029, are larger transitions that the BJP, as the party behind the steering wheel at the Centre, must help the nation navigate, and that Nabin’s tenure will need to prepare the party for — the census and caste count, delimitation exercise, implementation of women’s reservation in legislatures, simultaneous elections.

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In a diverse, federal polity, each of these transitions will need to be negotiated with wisdom and care — they have also stoked anxieties. Politically, the BJP has been steadily expanding its tent, but its winner-takes-all approach has raised fears of a flattening of political terrain. Into its 13th year in power, the party too often sounds and appears thin-skinned, hyper-sensitive to criticism and shrill in its ideological rhetoric, unwilling to engage with voices not its own. If the new president is to shape the party’s future, he must ensure that the BJP stands and listens to these voices, even as it pushes ahead.