Polls in Sight, BJP Rejigs Organisation Structure

New Delhi: A Pasmanda Muslim and former vice-chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University Tariq Mansoor, the son of veteran Congress leader A.K. Antony, Anil Antony, a prominent Gurjar leader from western Uttar Pradesh Surendra Singh Nagar and the face of tea tribes from the Northeast Kamakhya Prasad Tasa were among those inducted into the BJP president J.P. Nadda’s team on Saturday.

While Mr Mansoor, who is also an MLC from Uttar Pradesh and Rajya Sabha members Saroj Pandey and Laxmikant Bajpayee have been accommodated in Team Nadda as national vice-presidents, the party’s former Telangana unit chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar has been inducted in the newly rejigged team as the general secretary, along with Rajya Sabha MP Radha Mohan Agarwal.

The party has dropped C.T. Ravi, a leader from Karnataka, Dilip Saikia, a Lok Sabha MP from Assam, as its general secretaries, and Vinod Sonkar, Harish Dwivedi, both Lok Sabha MPs from Uttar Pradesh, and Sunil Deodhar as secretaries. Dilip Ghosh, a Lok Sabha MP from West Bengal, has been dropped from the team as vice-president.

A tribal leader from Chhattisgarh, Lata Usendi, has been elevated to the post of vice president. The new secretaries in Mr Nadda’s team are Mr Antony, Mr Nagar and Mr Tasa.

There are 13 vice-presidents, nine general secretaries, including B.L. Santhosh as the in-charge of the organisation and 13 secretaries on the list.

Former Union minister Radha Mohan Singh, a Lok Sabha MP from Bihar, has been dropped from the post of party vice-president.

With this rejig, Mr Nadda’s team has two Muslims -- Mr Mansoor and Kerala leader Abdulla Kutty.

One of the prominent names missing from the list of Mr Nadda’s team is that of Mr Ravi, who was a general secretary and lost his Assembly seat in the recently concluded Karnataka Assembly polls. Mr Ravi was actively involved in the party’s poll strategies, but the four-term MLA lost his seat this time.

Former chief ministers Raman Singh, Vasundhara Raje, and Raghubar Das are among the seasoned leaders retained as vice-presidents on the new list.

Among the general secretaries, Arun Singh, Kailash Vijayvargiya, Dushyant Kumar Gautam, Tarun Chugh, Sunil Bansal and Vinod Tawde’s names remain on the team of Mr Nadda, whose tenure was extended in January this year to allow him to be at the helm during the next Lok Sabha polls.

The party also appointed Phanindra Nath Sharma as its Haryana state unit general secretary (organisation) and G.R. Ravindra Raju in a similar position for its Assam and Tripura units. Both Mr Raju and Mr Sharma will be swapping positions. Vivek Dadhakar will be taking over as the general secretary (organisation) in the party's Andaman and Nicobar units. In the BJP, organisational secretaries in the central team and state units are deputed by the RSS to coordinate between the Sangh and the political organisation.