Amit Shah, a close aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is all set to be the new BJP president with the party’s highest decision-making body expected to announce his name tomorrow.
The BJP Parliamentary Board will be meeting tomorrow to put its stamp of approval on Shah’s name as the new party chief, sources said.
According to sources, Shah will take over from Rajnath Singh, who is now the Union Home Minister and has announced he will relinquish his BJP role in keeping with the party’s “one-man, one-post” formula.
Shah was the party strategist instrumental in scripting BJP’s massive victory in the north, especially in the politically key state of Uttar Pradesh, where it won 71 of the total 80 seats.
BJP is set for major organisational changes following its victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls as many of its senior leaders have become part of the Modi government.
The party’s reorganisation will come ahead of Assembly elections in states like Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand later this year and early next year.
The RSS, BJP’s ideological fountainhead, is also keen that the party should not be weakened after government formation.
RSS has already deputed two of its key leaders Ram Madhav and Shiv Prakash to work for BJP and new roles for the both of them will be assigned by the new party chief. The two are likely to get key roles in the revamped party set-up with Madhav likely to be the new party general secretary.
The likely announcement of Shah’s name as BJP president will come after RSS’s nod for the same. If Shah does indeed become BJP chief, both the Prime Minister and the party president will hail from the same state of Gujarat.
Modi, who was himself a full-time RSS ‘pracharak’ (organiser), was earlier deputed by RSS to work for BJP.
Party leaders feel that after Shah becomes the BJP chief, the link between the party and the government would be further strengthened as he is considered to be a close aide to the Prime Minister and has “direct” links with the powers-that-be in the government.
–PTI