Gadkari is BJP chief?

Nitin Gadkari, the president of the Maharashtra BJP, is likely to be the next BJP President once Rajnath Singh’s term comes to an end in January. Gadkari is an old RSS hand, has a clean image, is a fairly good orator in Hindi and Marathi and, above all, is ideologically committed to the Hindutva philosophy. Besides, at 52, this lawyer-turned-politician fulfils the party’s quest for a generational change. As PWD Minister in the Sena-BJP government in Maharashtra, Gadkari had commissioned a number of flyovers in Mumbai and also commissioned the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. Though his relations with Gopinath Munde, the tribal face of the party in Maharashtra, have been rather uneasy, the consensus among senior Sangh Parivar leaders is that he fits the bill for the top job in the BJP.