After a wait of nearly two years, the BJP finally got its new national president last month with the formal appointment of Nitin Nabin as the successor of JP Nadda. Although the BJP would prefer to term it an election, the fact remains that the BJP has never held an election for its president since it was formed in 1980.

The process is simple: identify someone to head the party and get that person to file the nomination. No other nomination is filed against that person. Thus, the selected candidate is declared elected unopposed.

The ritual of ‘unopposed elections’

The BJP is not the only party to appoint its president. But for the Congress party, it is difficult to recollect which other national or regional party actually voted for the top post. Voting was not planned in the Congress but forced, as leaders like Jitendra Prasada and Shashi Tharoor, who refused to go by the script, filed their nominations and were defeated by huge margins.

Almost 22 years after Prasada had challenged Sonia Gandhi in 2000, Tharoor filed his nomination against the Gandhis’ chosen nominee, Mallikarjun Kharge, and faced defeat by a big margin. He dared to challenge and is now facing the challenge from within.

Congress versus BJP: Democratic claims

If the Congress can claim to be more democratic than the BJP for electing two........

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