Bjp Organisational Reshuffle Smriti Irani Piyush Goyal Amit Malviya Deepak Mhaskey

Seven months after Nitin Nabin took over as the party’s national president, the BJP on Monday announced a new set of national office-bearers.

B L Santhosh continues to be national general secretary (organisation) while former Union Minister Smriti Irani has been reappointed as general secretary. Only two of the eight national general secretaries — Vinod Tawde and Sunil Bansal — were retained. Dindori MP and former Union Minister of State Bharti Pawar, former Tripura CM Biplab Deb, Rajya Sabha MPs Sanjay Bhatia and Satish Poonia, former MP and Assam in-charge Harish Dwivedi, Khargone MP Gajendra Patel are the new general secretaries.

RSS ideologue Ram Madhav has been made national vice-president along with former Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje Scindia, former MPs Tirat Singh Rawat, Rekha Verma, and UP MLC Tariq Mansoor. Six of the 13 vice-presidents are women.

Former Kerala BJP chief K Surendran and Sandeep Pathak, who recently switched to the BJP from AAP, are among the 16 national secretaries.

Another significant change was the party’s decision to drop Amit Malviya as its social media convener and replace him with Deepak Mhaskey, who currently serves as the head of the Chhattisgarh Medical Services Corporation Limited.

In addition Ashish Agrawal, Pradip Bhandari and Siddharth Yadav were appointed media co-convenors while Priti Gandhi, Shivavand Dwivedi, Alok Bhatt and Arun Yadav have been made social media co-conveners.

Anil Baluni continues to be the party’s media in-charge while recently elected Rajya Sabha MP Tarun Chugh has been appointed office in-charge.

Sources said the rejig in the media cell was an indicator that the BJP’s thrust is now on effective social media communication, having “learnt a lesson” from the recent Gen Z protests and the rise of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP).

Vadodara MP Hemang Joshi, 35, and 46-year-old Rituraj Kishore Sinha are the young faces in Nabin’s team. Joshi, as national BJYM chief, has replaced Lok Sabha MP Tejasvi Surya seemingly in line with the party’s reshuffle after the protests.

The BJP’s new national treasurer will be Piyush Goyal, replacing former UP Finance Minister Rajesh Agarwal. Goyal’s father Ved Prakash Goyal served in the same position for over two decades.

Only four minority faces figure on the list. Anil Antony has been made national secretary and chief of UP Minority Morcha Kunwar Basit Ali has been elevated as national Minority Morcha president.

Manpreet Badal and Mansoor also find a place in the list of office beareres

Have been in journalism covering national politics for 23 years. Have covered six consecutive Lok Sa... Read More

Jatin Anand is an Assistant Editor with the national political bureau of The Indian Express. With ov... Read More