The BJP parliamentary board will meet on Sunday to finalise the name of the ruling NDA’s vice-presidential candidate, sources said.

The meeting comes against the backdrop of Prime Minister Narendra Modi using the ramparts of the Red Fort to shower fulsome praise on the RSS, perceived by many as an effort to secure the Sangh’s go-ahead in the selection of the country’s next Vice-President and new BJP president.

The NDA leaders have authorised Modi and the BJP president to pick the VP candidate, but insiders said the name must be endorsed by the RSS, too. The RSS’s intransigence on the next BJP chief not being a “rubber stamp” has stymied the party’s presidential election. The BJP leadership wants to settle the candidature issue amicably.

“The next VP candidate would be someone who is strongly rooted in the BJP-RSS ecosystem and not an outsider like Jagdeep Dhankhar,” a BJP leader said. “The RSS ‘no objection’ is needed for the candidate,” the leader added.

Modi has been trying to mend relations with the RSS after the 2024 general elections that saw the BJP falling below the majority mark in the Lok Sabha and having to bank on allies for support. Modi had visited the RSS headquarters in Nagpur early this year, the first such visit by a sitting Prime Minister.

Modi’s acknowledgement of the RSS as an outfit in the “service of the nation” for the past 100 years from the ramparts of the Red Fort has stunned many. It was for the first time, a Prime Minister had used the Independence Day address to hail a Hindutva outfit. Privately, even BJP leaders felt Modi betrayed the desperation to win over the trust of the RSS.

The VP election scheduled on September 9 has been necessitated by Dhankhar’s sudden resignation last month, citing health issues. Dhankhar, however, was believed to have been forced to resign for not toeing the government line. Dhankhar was primarily a leader from the socialist stable, who was associated with the Congress before he joined the BJP.

BJP insiders said the parliamentary board meeting most likely would be a formality and the name would already have been decided by the top leaders in consultation with the RSS. “Most likely, the meeting would authorise
Modi to decide the name of the VP candidate,” a BJP leader said.

In the Modi years, the parliamentary board headed by the BJP president has been filled with loyalists by pushing out veterans like L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi and dropping two other leaders with some standing, Nitin Gadkari and Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The current board has BJP chief J.P. Nadda, Modi, home minister Amit Shah and defence minister Rajnath Singh as its prominent members. Other members are relatively low profile such as former Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa, Union minister Sarbananda Sonowal and former IPS officer Iqbal Singh Lalpura, who can’t be expected to object to decisions taken by the top leaders.

Probable names

The names of several governors known to be close to the RSS-BJP are doing the rounds as the VP candidate. On top of the list of probables are Gujarat governor Acharya Devvrat, Karnataka governor Thawarchand Gehlot, Sikkim governor Om Mathur and Jammu and Kashmir lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha.

Devvrat has emerged as a strong contender because he belongs to the Jat community like Dhankhar. Many in the BJP feel that his elevation could pacify the Jat community, which feels that two of its leaders — Dhankhar and former governor Satyapal Malik — had been treated shabbily by the Modi government.

Gehlot fits into the BJP’s push for consolidating the backward caste voters. Gehlot has enough parliamentary experience as he had been the leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha during the first Modi government.

Mathur and Sinha could make the cut if the BJP-RSS leadership decides to promote an upper caste face as the next VP to assure the party’s traditional vote base. “If the VP candidate is an upper caste, the next BJP chief most likely would be an OBC,” a BJP leader said.