Nitin Gadkari: From a humble student leader to BJP chief

Gadkari who was appointed by the party's Parliamentary Board to the top post,is a disciplined soldier of RSS and will have the distinction of becoming the first BJP chief from Maharashtra.

It has been a long journey for 52-year-old Nitin Gadkari from a humble student leader to the youngest-ever President of the BJP.

Gadkari who was appointed by the party’s Parliamentary Board to the top post today,is a disciplined soldier of RSS and will have the distinction of becoming the first BJP chief from Maharashtra.

It is a coincidence that he hails from Nagpur,the headquarters of the RSS — which has always been the guiding force for the main opposition party.

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Gadkari,who has replaced Rajnath Singh,has been entrusted with the responsibility at a time when Congress is playing the Rahul Gandhi card,projecting the young leader as the future Prime Minister and BJP is facing serious challenges on the leadership front.

The BJP leader,who was till now the chief of Maharashtra BJP,proved his mettle as an effective minister in the Shiv Sena-BJP government in the state ten years back.

Though an ‘outsider’ in Delhi circles,he is no babe in the woods and is known in the BJP as a clear thinker having a forward-looking vision and an organiser who knows how to take the party along.

Gadkari has maintained his close proximity with the RSS leadership right from the days of the then RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras and later with Rajju Bhaiyya,K C Sudarshan and the current head of the organisation Mohan Bhagwat.

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In fact,the talk in BJP circles is that Gadkari became the hot favourite for the top job following Bhagwat’s search for a new leader to turn the party around.