Nitin Nabin is new BJP president, as nomination concludes

Five-term MLA from Bihar, Nitin Nabin, 45, is the new national president of the BJP, it was announced after a day-long nomination process at the BJP headquarters, where he was the only candidate in the fray.

Declaring this, Rajya Sabha member K. Laxman, who had been functioning as the Returning Officer for the whole electoral process of electing a new BJP president, said 37 sets of nomination papers had been filed in favour of Mr. Nabin and had been found valid at the end of the day. “Now, after a period of withdrawal, in my capacity of National Returning Officer, Sanghathan Parv, Bharatiya Janata Party, I hereby announce that only one name, that of Shri Nitin Nabin, has been proposed for the post of National President of the Bharatiya Janata Party,” Mr. Laxman said in a statement.

The process to elect the national president of the BJP was initiated after the election of State presidents of 30 State units, out of 36, although the required number to conclude the national president’s poll was around 50% of State units having completed their own elections. Thus, the electoral college was large.

Mr. Nabin had been declared the national working president of the BJP on December 14, after a nearly 18-month search, and his appointment to this post was meant to signal that he was the choice of the BJP high command for the post of national president as well.

The notification of the schedule for formally electing Mr. Nabin was issued on January 16, with the nomination process to be completed between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., which was done on Monday (January 19, 2026). In all, 37 sets of nomination papers, including those that included Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s signature, apart from Union Ministers J.P. Nadda, Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, among others, were filed. State units, with Chief Ministers in tow, including Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu, Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant also filed nomination papers in favour of Mr. Nabin.

On scrutiny, as per the statement released by Mr. Laxman, all sets of nominations were found to be correctly filled, and with Mr. Nabin the only candidate in the fray, he was elected president. Mr. Nabin is slated to formally take over the role on Tuesday (January 20, 2026).

As one of the youngest BJP presidents to date, Mr. Nabin is expected to midwife a generational shift in the BJP as it looks forward to the next decade or so. Hailing from Bihar, Mr. Nabin’s father, Nabin Kishore Prasad Sinha, had been a multi-term BJP MLA and had thus been associated with the party for some time. He was on the verge of completing his engineering degree from Birla Institute of Technology (Mesra) when, in 2006, his father passed away, and he was roped in to contest the bypoll from his seat. Since then, Mr. Nabin has remained unbeaten as an MLA, first from Patna West, and after delimitation from the Bankipur seat. He also served as Minister for Roads in the Nitish Kumar government between August 2021 and 2022, as Minister for Urban Development, Housing and Law and Justice from 2024-2025.

Organisationally, he held positions in the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP, at the State and later at the national level as well. He has held charge of States like Chhattisgarh and Sikkim, where, especially in the former, he was considered key in terms of campaign issues and organisation cohesion that saw the BJP return to power after a gap in that State in 2023.

BJP sources said Mr. Modi will be present as Mr. Nabin formally takes over on Tuesday (January 20, 2026). A meeting of the National Council of the BJP is also likely to be called soon to ratify the election.