BJP’s New List Of National Office-Bearers

The BJP on Saturday shared a long-awaited list of its national office-bearers with the party effecting a major reshuffle in key organisational positions, as it dropped Uma Bharti and Ram Madhav and gave the team a more pan-India look by bringing in many new faces, including some seen to be articulate champions of its core ideology.

The highlights of the new list are the replacement of several general secretaries, including Ram Madhav, P Muralidhar Rao and Anil Jain, with new faces; the appointment of Tejasvi Surya, a young member of parliament and emphatic espouser of the Hindutva idealogy, as the party's youth wing president; and giving place to West Bengal leader Mukul Roy, and Vinod Tawade and Pankaja Munde of Maharashtra in the team.

In the names of office-bearers announced by party president JP Nadda, Roy has been made a vice president, and the two Maharashtra leaders secretaries. There had been reports that all three of them were miffed with their respective state leadership.

Roy has been a key member of the party's political campaign in West Bengal, which goes to assembly polls next year.

Surya replaces Poonam Mahajan.

Uma Bharti has been dropped as vice president along with Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, Prabhat Jha, Om Prakash Mathur and Shyam Jaju among others, while Saroj Pandey has been dropped as general secretary.

Some of them may have failed to find a place for reasons like they are wont to make comments which have repeatedly irked the leadership, and non-performance, sources said.

However, they added that the party may have other roles in mind for a few of them and referred to the chances of a Union Cabinet reshuffle, which may happen in some time.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted the new team of office-bearers.

"Congratulations and best wishes to the new team. I am confident they will uphold the glorious tradition of our party of serving the people of India selflessly and with dedication. May they work hard to empower the poor and marginalised," he tweeted.

There are five new general secretaries among the total eight: Dalit leader Dushyant Kumar Gautam, D Purandareshwari of Andhra Pradesh, CT Ravi of Karnataka, Tarun Chugh of Punjab, a state where the BJP's ties with ally Akali Dal have nosedived over farm bills, and Dilip Saikia from Assam.

Bhupender Yadav, Kailash Vijayvargiya and Arun Singh have retained their position as general secretaries, who occupy a critical position in the organisation as they are often put in charge of states and serve as a link between regional and central leaderships.

Among the new vice presidents are Radhan Mohan Singh, leader from Bihar which is headed to assembly polls in November and former Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das.

"It's a balanced team with representation from across the country, including Manipur and Nagaland. The average age of office-bearers is lower than what it was and educational background has also played a role as we tried to make the team representative," a senior party leader said.

One big state that remains unrepresented in the list of 70 office-bearers is Tamil Nadu.

Another highlight of the list is a high representation of MPs; 24 of whom have found a place.

Sources said those who have been dropped should not be judged negatively, adding that any new list of office bearers is bound to have a high proportion of fresh faces, something the party leadership has constantly pushed for.

The party has also increased the number of its national spokespersons to 23, while elevating MP Anil Baluni as the chief spokesperson and continuing him as its national media head. The new spokespersons include former minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Rajiv Chandrasekhar, Tom Vadakkan, Aparajita Sarangi and young Dalit leader Guru Prakash.

Amit Malviya remains in charge of the party's IT wing.

The new list of spokespersons is more representative of social, caste, regional and religious diversity, a source noted.

However, the party has not filled vacancies in its parliamentary board, its highest decision-making body. Some vacancies in other positions also remain.

The number of women in the national office bearers list has risen to 13 from eight earlier.

The new list, however, drew sharp reaction from former West Bengal BJP chief Rahul Sinha, who has been dropped as a national secretary, as he accused the party of ignoring his 40 years of service to accommodate former Trinamool Congress leaders that have joined the saffron party.

He tweeted, "Served BJP for 40 Years as the Warrior and today just to include TMC leaders, I have been asked to Left the Post of the Party (sic)."

Besides Mukul Roy, another former TMC leader whose name figures in the list is Anupam Hazra, who has been made a secretary.

The BJP also named Rajesh Agarwal as its new treasurer and brought in new faces as heads of its different morchas, with K Laxman, Rajkumar Chahar, Lal Singh Arya, Samir Oraon and Jamal Siddiqui made president of OBC, SC, ST and minority morcha respectively.

It has, however, not announced the head of its women's wing.

It is customary for a new party president to announce a new list of office bearers. Nadda had taken over in January but the outbreak of Covid-19 had delayed the process.