Team Amit Shah: BJP faces flak for tainted Yeddyurappa’s inclusion

 

However, a section of party leaders indicated that Mr Gandhi could be “propped up as the BJP’s face in UP”. On the other hand, some feel this was coming as Mr Gandhi was reported to be a Rajnath camp loyalist. Mr Gandhi was the general secretary in former chief Rajnath Singh’s team. 

 

 

The Opposition, meanwhile, attacked the BJP over Mr Yeddyurappa’s inclusion, wondering about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ways of "combating corruption". Mr Yeddyurappa, who returned to the party just before the Lok Sabha elections after he was earlier forced to quit as CM following corruption charges, is among the 11 vice-presidents. Former Union minister and Rajya Sabha member Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has been retained as vice-president.

 

Sources disclosed that the decision was conveyed to Mr Gandhi a few days ago, with a hint that he would be free to campaign in Uttar Pradesh, where the party hopes to form its own government in the next Assembly elections due in May 2017. He has not been included in the new team also because his mother is already part of the Modi Cabinet, sources said.

 

J.P. Nadda, Chhapra MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Murlidhar Rao continue to be general secretaries. Ramlal will continue as general secretary (organisation). The four new 

general secretaries are Mr Madhav, outgoing BJP Mahila Morcha chief Saroj Pandey, Lok Sabha MP from Agra Ram Shankar Katheriya and Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan 

Bhupendra Yadav.

 

The other vice presidents are Bandaru Dattatreya and Satyapal Malik, both Lok Sabha 

members, Purushottam Rupala and Prabhat Jha, former state unit presidents, and Raghuvar Das, a former deputy chief minister of Jharkhand. Former Lok Sabha member from Udaipur Kiran Maheshwari, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, who was Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s political adviser during his tenure as BJP chief, Renu Devi (OBC leader and former Bihar minister) and Lucknow mayor Dinesh Sharma are also vice-presidents in the new team.

 

While the team has representation from across the country, including from the poll-bound states of Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, it has no representation from Kerala, West Bengal and Jammu and Kashmir. V. Satish, Saudan Singh, Shiv Prakash and B.L. Santosh will be joint secretaries (organisation).

 

Mr Shah’s new team has 14 secretaries, including Mr Shrikant Sharma, who is currently 

the media convenor. Mr Siddharth Nath Singh has been retained as secretary. Former Union minister Pramod Mahajan’s daughter Poonam, a Lok Sabha MP, has also been made secretary. Other party secretaries are Shyam Jaju, Anil Jain, H. Raja, Ramen Deka, Sudha Yadav, Ram Shekar Netam, Arun Singh, R.P. Singh, Jyoti Dhruve, Tarun Chugh and Rajneesh Kumar.

 

The new team has retained Anurag Thakur as the youth wing chief and appointed former 

Aurangabad mayor Vijaya Rahatkar as the new Mahila Morcha chief. The spokespersons who have been retained in Mr Shah’s team are Shahnawaz Hussain, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Meenakshi Lekhi and Vijay Sonkar Shastri. The new spokespersons are Nalin Kohli, Sambit Patra, Anil Baluni, G.V.L. Narasimha Rao and Ms Kumaramangalam.

 

Former Union minister Faggan Singh Kulaste is the new ST morcha president while 

Dushyant Kumar Gautam will continue to be the party’s SC morcha chief and Abdul Rasheed Ansari will continue as minority morcha chief. Mr Arun Jain will continue to be the party’s office secretary in the new team. 

 

The BJP chief also announced the names of state unit chiefs of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Assam. Lok Sabha member Nand Kumar Singh Chauhan will succeed Narendra Singh Tomar in Madhya Pradesh. Mr Tomar is currently Union minister for mines, steel, labour and employment. Former Assembly speaker in Chhattisgarh Dharmpal Kaushik has been appointed as the new party chief of the unit. He replaces Vishnu Deo Sai, who is now part of the Modi government as Union minister of state for mines, steel and labour and employment.

 

A former national secretary, Tamilisai Soundararajan, has been appointed as the new party chief of the Tamil Nadu unit. She replaces Kanyakumari MP Pon Radhakrishnan, who has since become Union minister of state for heavy industries and public enterprises.

 

Siddharth Bhattacharya, a former co-convenor of the party’s legal cell, has been made the new president of the party’s Assam state unit. He replaces Sarbananda Sonowal, who is minister of state for skill development, entrepreneurship, youth affairs and sports (independent charge) in the Modi government.