Shah could be declared BJP chief by early next week

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to announce party general secretary Amit Shah as its national president early next week.

Senior party leadership had earlier decided to wait until the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) working committee meeting to discuss the issue when it is scheduled to meet at Dhar in Madhya Pradesh around mid-July. However, the view now in the Sangh Parivar is that they should appoint a new party president before the start of the next Parliament session on July 7.

The leadership, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who is the current party president, along with the RSS, agree on Shah's name. Modi and Singh are likely to discuss the issue with the RSS brass over the weekend to take a final call. There have been some reservations on how the PM and party president can both be from one state, Gujarat. But that reservation has largely been rejected, given that Modi is now seen to represent the entire country after his victory from Varanasi and having resigned his Vadodara seat.

The party does not want to waste any more time and believes Shah should get adequate time to select his team of vice-presidents and general secretaries and start preparations for the upcoming Assembly elections. Many of the current officebearers like Piyush Goyal, Prakash Javadekar, Dharmendra Pradhan and others are now part of the government.

According to the dominant view, Shah should be given as much time as possible to galvanise the party units in Maharashtra and Haryana - the two states that will have Assembly polls by October-November this year.

Both these states have Congress governments for a decade or more and the BJP wants to wrest these from the Congress. Shah is already the in-charge of BJP's Maharashtra election campaign.

The party hopes Shah would do a UP in Maharashtra. The BJP won 73 seats of 80 in UP. The party also has ambitions to win the 2017 UP Assembly election and believes Shah's experience in handling elections in that state would be crucial.

On Wednesday, the party top leadership - Modi, Singh, Arun Jaitley and Nitin Gadkari - had met to reach a consensus that Shah was the frontrunner for the post of BJP president. Other names that have been discussed for the BJP top post were J P Nadda and Om Mathur. Both are Rajya Sabha MPs.