JP Nadda files nomination for chief post, likely to take over from Amit Shah

The BJP is set to get its new national president in place of Amit Shah on Monday, with its working president JP Nadda expected to be elected to the post unopposed.

Top party leaders have arrived at the BJP headquarters to file nominations in support of JP Nadda, who has long been seen as the choice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah for the job. A formal announcement regarding Nadda's election as president will be made in the afternoon and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also arrive at the party headquarters to felicitate him.

Here are Live Updates on the BJP president election:

11.41 am: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and JP Nadda, who is set to be elected BJP president, will hold a meeting with chief ministers and deputy chief ministers of party-ruled states on Monday evening.

10.46 am: Senior BJP leader Radha Mohan Singh, who is in charge of the party's organizational poll process, had said nominations for the national president's election will be filed on January 20, and a contest will take place the next day if required.

PAVING THE WAY FOR JP NADDA

The election of a new president will bring to end incumbent Shah's tenure of over five-and-a-half years during which the BJP expanded its footprints across the country like never before and enjoyed its best phase in electoral contests despite suffering a few setbacks in state polls.

The BJP has the convention of electing its president with consensus and without any contest, and there is little possibility that it will be any other way this time.

With Shah joining the Modi 2.0 government as home minister, the BJP began the exercise for electing his successor as the party has the convention of 'one person, one post'.

Nadda was appointed as the party's working president in July last year is an indication that the Himachal Pradesh leader was the likely choice for the top organizational job.

In the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election, he was in charge of the BJP's election campaign in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, where the party faced a tough challenge from the grand alliance of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The party won 62 out of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.