A lot has been said about why five-term Bihar MLA and State Minister Nitin Nabin has been chosen as the new working national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with a promotion to the full-time post of party president in the new year.
Much of this chatter, however, centres on factors that are, for want of a better word, ascriptive. At 45, Mr. Nabin is the youngest-ever BJP president (working or otherwise). His elevation signals a generational shift in the ruling party. He is also the first leader from Bihar to hold the post, an important marker after the BJP-Janata Dal (United) alliance won a big mandate in the recently concluded Assembly elections.
His community background — a Kayastha, an upper caste but not numerically significant in electoral terms — has also been seen significant, in that it neither alienates marginalised communities nor unsettles dominant social groups.
During the year and a half it took to settle on Mr. Nabin, the RSS, the ideological mothership of the Sangh Parivar, was said to favour a more senior, seasoned successor to the current BJP president, J.P. Nadda. Mr. Nabin, though now associated with the RSS, didn’t have the customary stints in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the RSS’s student wing, or in other frontal organisations, unlike Mr. Nadda and most other senior leaders of the party.
Clearly, the new working president’s youth and background suggest that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah were the prime movers behind his selection.
Born in 1980, the year the BJP was founded, Nitin Nabin grew up in Bihar where his father Nabin Kishore Prasad Sinha was a BJP MLA. Widely respected within the BJP in Bihar, the late Sinha represented Patna (West) in the Bihar Assembly, but is not believed to have harboured any political ambitions for his son.
After completing his matriculation at St. Michael’s in Patna, Mr. Nabin was, as was common in middle class families in Bihar in the 1990s, sent to Delhi for further schooling at Col Satsangi’s Kiran Memorial Public School (CSKM), a residential and day-boarding institution where he completed his Class XII studies.
He then went on to study engineering at the Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) in Mesra, Jharkhand, with no plans to enter politics. In a twist of fate, one that now seems a recurring feature in Mr. Nabin’s life, he suffered a bereavement while in the fourth and final year of his engineering course, with the death of his father. In 2006, having abandoned his studies during that period of family crisis, he contested and won the Patna (West) byelection, held after his father’s passing. The seat was first offered to Sinha’s widow, Meera Sinha, but she urged Mr. Nabin to take the plunge.
That seat, after delimitation, is now known as Bankipore, from where Mr. Nabin has remained undefeated to this day. With his entry into the Assembly, he also began his quiet climb through the party’s organisational ranks, securing a place in the BJP’s National Executive, and taking on roles in its youth wing, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), eventually serving as president of its Bihar unit until 2019. “He was always conscientious, and affable, and very low profile, hardly ever pushing himself forward. When he was nominated for a fellowship to the United States while in the BJYM, he was shocked that he had been noticed enough,” said a former colleague of Mr. Nabin from the BJYM.
In the limelight
The first time this largely below-the-radar political ascent drew wider attention was in 2010, when Mr. Nabin, along with another BJP leader, Sanjeev Chaurasia, put up posters across Patna thanking the then-Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, for the ₹5 crore relief sent by the State government after the 2008 Bihar floods. The move irked the BJP’s alliance partner and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who made a point of returning the amount and expressing his displeasure by cancelling a dinner he was to host for BJP leaders during the saffron party’s National Executive meeting in Patna.
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While the BJP and the Janata Dal (U) tangoed in a will-they-won’t-they alliance for much of the next decade and a half, Mr. Nabin had chosen his side and stuck to it. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), he was inducted in 2021 as Minister for Roads in the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government in the State, and a month ago, he took oath as Minister for Urban Development, Law and Justice.
Within the party, his low-key style marked him out early for organisational responsibilities. In 2019, he was given charge of Sikkim, where he played a part in unseating five-time Chief Minister Pawan Chamling, the longest-serving Chief Minister in India, and securing an NDA victory in the State.
It was, however, another serendipitous assignment that brought him to the attention of Union Home Minister Amit Shah: his appointment as the BJP’s election co-in-charge in Chhattisgarh in 2023. Mr. Nabin’s ability to work with — and extract results from — the party’s second rung of leadership in the State, as it took on then-Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, who had appeared invincible, impressed Mr. Shah.
“Raman Singh was the towering leader in the State, but Nitin Nabin reached out to leaders like Vijay Sharma and O.P. Chaudhary, drawing them out of their hesitancy to not just win the polls but also assert the generational shift that happened in Chhattisgarh BJP as well,” said an associate of Mr. Nabin.
The Gist
In 2006, having abandoned his studies after his father’s passing, Nitin Nabin contested and won the Patna (West) byelection — his first electoral victory
That seat, after delimitation, is now known as Bankipore, from where Nabin has remained undefeated to this day
With his entry into the Assembly, he also began his quiet climb through the party’s organisational ranks, securing a place in the BJP’s National Executive, and eventually serving as president of its Bihar unit until 2019
Fate and ability
Mr. Shah fuelled anticipation around Mr. Nabin during the recent Bihar polls, when he visited the latter’s home in Patna for the Chhath festivities, sparking rumours that he might be made Deputy Chief Minister of the State — little knowing that a far bigger role was in store for him.
Mr. Nabin’s ascent to the top job is, therefore, a mix of fate and ability. His challenges, however, will only grow from this point on: his youth will have to signal enthusiasm rather than inexperience, and his easy manner must reflect authority rather than accommodation. He will need to prove that he was not merely in the right place at the right time, but also the right man for the job.
