Ram Madhav, Murlidhar out, Tejasvi youth chief in rejigged BJP line-up

NEW DELHI: Seven months after taking over as the full-fledged BJP chief, J P Nadda on Saturday announced the new team of office-bearers, dropping several prominent faces and bringing in new ones in a restructuring that marks a conscious effort to give representation to all regions.


High-profile names like Ram Madhav, Murlidhar Rao and Rajya Sabha MPs Anil Jain and Saroj Pandey didn’t figure among the general secretaries, raising eyebrows.

Rajya Sabha MP and ICCR chief Vinay Sahasrabuddhe and Uma Bharati were not retained among the cast of vice- presidents, which included three former CMs — Vasundhara Raje, Raman Singh and

Raghuvbar Das

and new entrants Mukul Roy, Baijayant Panda and Annapurna Devi.

While retaining Bhupender Yadav, Kailash Vijayvargiya and Arun Singh as general secretaries, Nadda appointed D Purandareshwari, daughter of NTR, Dushyant Kumar Gautam, C T Ravi, Tarun Chugh and Dilip Saikia.

Saikia is widely reckoned to be a promising talent from Assam for the crucial organisational job. Nadda promoted Rajya Sabha MP Anil Baluni as “chief spokesperson”, a position which had so far been occupied by only two others — Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad. Baluni will also continue as national media head with Sanjay Mayukh as his deputy.

Significantly,

Amit Malviya

was retained as the convenor of the IT and Social Media cell despite Subramanian Swamy’s demand that he be dropped. Malviya thanked PM Modi, Nadda , Union home minister Amit Shah and B L Santosh, general secretary in-charge of organisation, for reposing faith in him.

Congratulating the new office-bearers, the PM said, “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.”

Rajesh Agarwal, former UP minister, will be the new treasurer, a post earlier held by Union minister Piyush Goyal. Sudhir Gupta was named the joint treasurer. Tejasvi Surya, Bengaluru South MP, will head the youth wing of the party in place of Mumbai MP Poonam Mahajan.

Two known names from Maharashtra — former ministers Vinod Tawade and Pankaja Munde — were included among national secretaries.

More than the inductions, it was the exclusions of Madhav and Rao, both on loan from RSS, which grabbed the attention of political circles.