Drops Ram Madhav, P Muralidhar Rao, Anil Jain, Saroj Pandey as general secretaries
BJP national president JP Nadda on Saturday announced a new team of office-bearers and significantly replaced Ram Madhav, P Muralidhar Rao, Anil Jain, Saroj Pandey as general secretaries.
Nadda appointed Bengaluru Member of Parliament Tejasvi Surya as party’s youth wing president, replacing Poonam Mahajan.
The list of eight general secretaries has five new faces with Bhupender Yadav, Arun Singh, and Vijayvargiya being retained.
Dushyant Kumar Gautam (MP Delhi), D Purandareshwari, CT Ravi (MLA, Karnataka), Chugh (Punjab), and Dilip Saikia ( MP, Assam) are new choices as general secretaries.
In the list of vice presidents, Nadda has retained ex-Chief Ministers Dr Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh), Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan), and Baijyant Jay Panda (Odisha).
The new vice-presidents are: West Bengal leader Mukul Roy, former Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das, members of Parliament Rekha Verma, Annapurna Devi, Bharatiben Shiyal, DK Aruna, Radha Mohan Singh, M Chuba Ao and AP Abdullakutty.
Radha Mohan Singh is a former Union Minister and former State BJP president. His induction as the party’s national VP comes ahead of the Bihar Assembly polls, obviously to send a message among his Rajput caste men. Besides Radha Mohan Singh, the poll-bound Bihar has three others in the list of office-bearers, most of them retained from the last team.
Similarly, Mukul Roy’s elevation as vice-president is seen as a move with an eye on the next year’s Bengal Assembly elections. In addition to Roy, Member of Parliament (West Bengal) Raju Bisht figures as spokesperson in the list.
The “new team” which has come into effect eight months after Nadda took up the reins of the party represents more or less a status quo, mirroring the profile under the two-terms of Amit Shah.
Among 12 vice-presidents announced, Dr Raman, Raje and Panda have been retained in their posts.
Ahead of the crucial Madhya Pradesh bypolls for an odd-22 Assembly seats, the BJP has continued with its senior leader Kailash Vijaywargiya as party general secretary from MP.
Nadda has effected changes in its national spokespersons - dropping leaders GVL Narasimha Rao (RS MP) and Meenakshi Lekhi (MP, New Delhi).
One of the stark and distinct changes in the team is the replacement of the high-profile Madhav who was overseeing sensitive States, including Jammu & Kashmir, with Punjab’s Tarun Chugh as general secretary.
It is expected that the changes in the party might be followed by the long-awaited Cabinet reshuffle in coming months, according to sources. There is no confirmation whether those who were moved out of the office-bearer’s list would be shifted to Government or assigned other key party jobs.
‘Firebrand’ Bengaluru MP Surya, appreciated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, has been appointed as party’s youth wing president, replacing Poonam Mahajan.
The reshuffle has raised the number of national spokespersons to 23, MP Anil Baluni elevated as chief spokesperson and remains media in-charge. The list of spokespersons include Sambit Patra, Sudhanshu Trivedi (RS MP), Syed Shahnawaz Hussain, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Nalin Kohli, Rajiv Chandrashekhar (RS MP), Seyed Zafar Islam (MP RS), and Tom Vaddakam.
Dr K Laxman from Telangana has been appointed in-charge of the OBC cell while Raj Kumar Chauhan, an MP from Uttar Pradesh. will head the Kisan Morcha. Lal Singh Arya has been named the head of the SC Morcha, Samir Oaraon will head the ST Morcha and Jamal Siddiqui will head the Minority Morcha.
There are 12 vice-presidents, eight national general secretaries and one general secretary (organisation) BL Santosh with joint general secretaries ---V Satish, Saudan Singh, Shiv Prakash (all four RSS representatives in the BJP) --- and 13 national secretaries. Treasurer’s post has been given to Rajesh Aggarwal with Sudhir Gupta (MP) being his deputy.
