JP Nadda’s political rise and the parallel growth of his family-run NGO

JP Nadda’s political rise and the parallel growth of his family-run NGO

JP Nadda’s political rise and the parallel growth of his family-run NGOAligning with Nadda’s political ascent is the growth of his family-run NGO, Chetna Sansthan, which received corporate and government-linked CSR funding after the BJP came to power in 2014 – including donations from public sector units. The NGO is run by his wife Mallika.Shivnarayan RajpurohitPublished on: 13 Jun 2025, 12:02 pm

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Until 1982, the Himachal Pradesh University was a Left fortress. But the next year, it was breached by a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad – the students’ outfit of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Standing as an ABVP presidential candidate was a 23-year-old lithe law student with a brush mustache. The election had ended in a deadlock with 562 votes each for the ABVP and Left outfit Students’ Federation of India. The SFI sought a re-examination of votes – only the invalid ones for a quicker recount. There were murmurs that one invalid vote was cast in favour of the SFI candidate. But the university election commission dragged its feet. Protests by student unions continued. 

Eventually it was decided that both candidates should complete the president’s term simultaneously, “in the best interest of democracy”, according to a former MLA who was then the polling agent for the SFI candidate. 

And then, for the first time since the university was founded in 1970, ABVP had a students’ union president. 

That ABVP candidate was Jagat Prakash Nadda, presently the BJP’s national working president and a union minister in charge of health and family welfare, and chemicals and fertilisers. 

Nadda’s victory wasn’t a coincidence. It was part of a meticulous plan, spanning late-night brainstorming sessions and early-morning outreach to split the Left by flipping key SFI campaigners.

It also wasn’t Nadda’s first stint in student politics. Inspired by the JP movement, he had first cut his teeth in polls at the Patna University campus from 1976-79 during his undergraduate days as an ABVP worker. But it was the success at HPU which propelled Nadda to build his political career, brick by brick – from leading a people’s movement for upgrade of schools to diligently executing his organisational roles in youth organisations of the BJP and RSS. 

Some veteran BJP leaders eventually bristled at Nadda’s rapid rise in Himachal politics, according to party sources, pushing him towards Delhi in 2010. There, under the aegis of then BJP president Nitin Gadkari, Nadda began a new innings as a national general secretary. As the BJP’s graph shot up, so did Nadda’s. His career peaked after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when he succeeded union Home Minister Amit Shah as BJP’s national president – an elevation he owes to the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo. Amiable and industrious, Nadda is, within party circles, considered a “yes man” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah, and isn’t overtly ambitious. 

But aligning with Nadda’s political ascent is the growth of his family-run NGO, Chetna Sansthan, which received corporate and government-linked CSR funding after the BJP came to power in 2014 – including donations from public sector units. Run by his wife Mallika in Nadda’s village Vijaypur in Bilaspur, the NGO secured over Rs 4 crore in CSR funds from PSUs alongside private pharmaceutical and chemical firms. 

Mallika Nadda, who earlier taught history at the Himachal Pradesh University, also serves as chairperson of Special Olympics Bharat. Their 30-year-old son Harish has built a legal practice representing high-profile companies as well as the government. The family’s institutional presence in Bilaspur district ensures political continuity even during Nadda’s absence.

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