BJP unveils new national team, none from J&K

Smriti Irani, Ram Madhav, Goyal among prominent new faces; 51 of 65 office-bearers new

New Delhi, Aug 17: BJP president Nitin Nabin has announced the party’s new national team, with B L Santosh as national general secretary (Organisation), former Union minister Smriti Irani as general secretary and Ram Madhav as national vice president. Interestingly, the new team has no representation from Jammu and Kashmir.

The BJP on Monday overhauled its national team under party president Nitin Nabin, bringing in many new faces and some prominent leaders like former Union minister Smriti Irani as general secretary and former RSS functionary Ram Madhav as vice president.

The party, which said it has maintained the right balance between youth and experience, retained a few veterans including former chief minister of Rajasthan Vasundhara Raje Scindia, who was named one of its 13 vice-presidents.

Out of the total 65 names of office bearers announced on Monday, 51 are new. Six are below 40 years, 15 are in the 40-49 years age group, and 21 are in the 50-59 years age group. The office bearers also include 10 women and six leaders from minority communities, party sources said. They stressed that the revamp was done keeping in mind the BJP’s preparations for the assembly polls up to 2029 and the next general elections.

Union Minister Piyush Goyal has been named national treasurer. Incidentally, his father Ved Prakash Goyal, who served as a Union minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, had also served as the party’s national treasurer for a long time.

Goyal is the only Union minister who has been brought into the party’s new team.

The BJP has retained B L Santhosh as National General Secretary (Organisation), a key post in the party.

It has also brought in ex-Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb in its team of eight national general secretaries, out of which six are new, according to the list released by the party.

Lok Sabha MP D Purandeshwari and former Uttarakhand chief minister Tirath Singh Rawat are among the new vice presidents.

BJP MP and former president of the party’s Rajasthan unit Satish Poonia, Lok Sabha MP Gajendra Patel, Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Bhatia and ex-MP Harish Dwivedi, who is currently in charge of the party’s  political affairs in Assam, are among the new faces in the list of general secretaries.

The party removed Amit Malaviya as its IT department head, replacing him with Deepak Mhaskey from Chhattisgarh.

Vinod Tawde and Sunil Bansal are the only two national general secretaries that the BJP has retained in its new team.

The two leaders have been rewarded for their impressive organisational work, party sources said, noting Bansal’s contribution in the BJP’s victory in the West Bengal Assembly polls.

Tarun Chugh, a BJP Rajya Sabha MP, has been made the party’s central office in-charge in place of Rajya Sabha MP Arun Singh.

The number of vice presidents in the new team has been increased to 13 from 11, out of which nine are new. The total number of national general secretaries has also been increased to eight from the previous seven. The BJP’s new team has 16 national secretaries. There were 11 national secretaries in the previous team.

Former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Baijayant Jay Panda, Rekha Verma and Tariq Mansoor have been retained as vice presidents.

Nabin has also replaced all national morcha presidents of the party. The BJP chief has appointed Hemang Joshi from Gujarat as the party’s Yuva Morcha president, replacing party MP Tejasvi Surya.

Roop Kumari Choudhary from Chhattisgarh replaced Vanathi Srinivasan as BJP’s Mahila Morcha president. Amarpal Maurya from Uttar Pradesh was made OBC Morcha president, replacing Rajya Sabha MP K Laxman.

Varshaben Narendrabhai Doshi from Gujarat, Bharti Pravin Pawar from Maharashtra, Sardar Manpreet Singh Badal from Punjab, Lal Singh Arya from Madhya Pradesh, M Nagaraja from Karnataka and Madhuchandra Kar from West Bengal are among the new faces inducted in the new team of party vice presidents.

The BJP has brought in many new faces, including Kavita Patidar from Madhya Pradesh, K Surendran from Kerala, Sandeep Pathak from Delhi and Manoj Tigga from West Bengal, in its team of 16 national secretaries from different states.

The BJP has retained party MP Anil Baluni as its national media convenor, and appointed three new media co-convenors to assist him. They are Ashish Usha Agrawal, Pradeep Bhandari and Siddharth Yadav.

The party said that to ensure that every major faith in India is respected and accommodated, the national office has given place to one Sikh member, two Christian members and one member each from Muslim, Jain and Parsi communities.

Former Aligarh Muslim University vice chancellor Prof Tariq Mansoor has been appointed national vice president. Kunwar Basit Ali has been appointed president of the Minority Morcha.

Anil Antony, the son of Congress veteran A K Antony, has been retained as a national secretary. Former Punjab finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal has been appointed BJP national vice-president,

The party said the new appointments ensure widespread representation, accommodating voices from 23 states and Union territories across the country.

“Such balanced appointments empower the incoming national president’s executive team to operate with a profound awareness of the nation’s vast geographical landscape and regional nuances,” the BJP said in a statement.

The party highlighted that a special focus has been placed on the North-East region, which has been given distinct prominence through the appointment of three regional leaders from Tripura, Assam and Nagaland and the continuation of a dedicated North-East Coordination Cell, which will be headed by Sambit Patra.

Furthermore, the committee has four tribal representatives from West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and the North-East, two of whom are women. Additionally, the Scheduled Castes (SC) are represented by three members from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh.

Sanjay Mayukh, who was serving as national media co-convenor for the last several years, did not figure in the new team.

Priti Gandhi from Maharashtra, Shivanand Dwivedi from Delhi, Alok Bhatt from Uttarakhand and Arun Yadav from Haryana were made social media co-convenors in the BJP’s new national team.

BJP MP Sambit Patra was retained as the party’s north-east coordinator and Rajiv Babbar was appointed as joint coordinator.

Bansilal Gurjar from Madhya Pradesh has been made Kisan Morcha president.

Shivesh Kumar Ram from Bihar was appointed as SC Morcha president.

Mannalal Rawat from Rajasthan was appointed as the new ST Morcha president. Kunwar Basit Ali from Uttar Pradesh was made BJP Minority Morcha president.

The new faces among national secretaries are Bhola Singh from Uttar Pradesh, Pradip Varma from Jharkhand, Jagdish Ishwarbhai Patel from Gujarat, Phangnon Konyak from Nagaland, Sangeeta Yadav from Uttar Pradesh, M Venkateshan from Tamil Nadu, Siddharth Shambhu from Bihar, Swadesh Singh from Delhi, Mriganka Deo Barman from Assam, Rohan Gupta from Gujarat and Jai Prakash from Delhi.