NEW DELHI: Several prominent faces, including Tejasvi Surya, Amit Malviya, Arun Singh, Dushyant Kumar Gautam and Pankaja Munde, were dropped as the BJP unveiled its new national team on Monday.
Among the key functionaries retained was its national general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh.
Amit Malaviya, who was serving as the head of the BJP IT and social media department since 2015, was replaced by Deepak Mhaskey from Chhattisgarh.
Surya, a Lok Sabha MP for Bengaluru South, was appointed as BJP Yuva Morcha president in October 2020 when Union minister J P Nadda was the party president. He has been replaced by Hemang Joshi from Gujarat.
Gautam was serving as a BJP national general secretary since September 2020.
Arun Singh was serving as party national secretary since June 2015 when Home Minister Amit Shah was the BJP president. Earlier, he served the party in various other capacities including national secretary.
Pankaja Munde, the daughter of late Gopinath Munde and a former Union minister, was appointed BJP national secretary in September 2020.
Out of the total 65 names of office bearers announced on Monday by the BJP under party president Nitin Nabin, 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 new office bearers also include 12 women and six leaders from minority communities.
Party sources said that the revamp was done keeping in mind the BJP’s preparations for the assembly polls up to 2029 and the next general elections.
Those dropped in the revamped list of 13 vice presidents of the party appointed on Monday included Saroj Pandey, DK Aruna, M Chuba Ao, Abdulla Kutty, Laxmikant Bajpai and Lata Usendi.
Former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia, party MP Baijayant Jay Panda and former Aligarh Muslim University vice chancellor Prof Tariq Mansoor were retained as party vice presidents.
Rajya Sabha MP 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.
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.
Arvind Menon, Narendra Singh, Omprakash Dhurve, Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, Surendra Singh Nagar, and Manjinder Singh Sirsa are among those dropped in the revamped list of BJP national secretaries.
The party, however, retained Anil Antony, the son of Congress veteran A K Antony, as its national secretary.
The BJP retained Lok Sabha MP Anil Baluni as its national media convenor but removed Sanjay Mayukh from the post of co-convenor. Priti Gandhi from Maharashtra, Shivanand Dwivedi from Delhi, Alok Bhatt from Uttarakhand and Arun Yadav from Haryana were made media co-convenors in the BJP’s new national team.
Nabin has also replaced all national morcha presidents of the party.
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.
Source: Press Trust of India
