The leadership issue in the BJP came alive on Tuesday with former Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar stressing that the next party chief should belong to the “40-55 age group”. The 54-year-old IIT alumnus is said to be one of the contenders for the top job, and his name first cropped up in Arun Shourie’s interview to The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV’s Walk The Talk in the last week of August.

Asked if he was in the reckoning for the top job in the party, Parrikar told The Indian Express on Tuesday: “I’m not excited by all this, and right now I’m interested in Goa alone. If my name is seriously considered for the position, people from central BJP would get in touch with me. No one has got in touch with me so far. I have only called for a young person, in the 40-55 age group for the party president’s position.”

If one were to go by Parrikar’s “40-55 age-group” prescription though, central BJP leaders like M Venkaiah Naidu (60), Arun Jaitley (57), and Sushma Swaraj (57) would automatically be ruled out for the top job, leaving party general secretary Ananth Kumar (50) alone “who would fit the bill”. The term of present BJP chief, Rajnath Singh (58), comes to an end by the year-end.

While RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has, in the past, called for “55-60” as the “ideal average age group for the RSS”, he has left such finer details in the context of the BJP to be decided by the party itself even as he has called for a younger leadership in the party.

... contd.