Nitin Nabin appoints Abhishek Debroy, Kewal Singh Dhillon, Harsh Malhotra and Archana Gupta in key organisational reshuffle.
New Delhi: The BJP on Thursday named new party chiefs in its four state units, including Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Tripura. The saffron party has appointed Union minister Harsh Malhotra as the Delhi BJP president, while the Haryana unit gets its second woman chief in Archana Gupta after over four decades. In Punjab, where Assembly polls are due next year, the BJP has appointed Sardar Kewal Singh Dhillon, a Jat Sikh, as the state unit chief. An MLA from the Matabari Assembly constituency in Tripura Abhishek Debroy, has been appointed as the new president of the party of the Northeastern state.
The New Delhi unit president is the only Union minister in the Modi Cabinet from Delhi. Mr Malhotra (62) succeeds Virendra Sachdeva, who completed his three-year term as the Delhi BJP president in March this year. Before becoming a minister at the Centre, Mr Malhotra served as the general secretary of the Delhi BJP unit and is considered an expert on organisational matters as well as the functioning of the civic bodies. In 2015, he was elected as mayor of the erstwhile East Delhi Municipal Corporation.
Ms Gupta, a radiologist by profession, was serving the party as its Haryana general secretary and succeeds Mohan Lal Badoli. Ms Gupta, who hails from Panipat, is the second woman after Kamla Verma, a veteran BJP leader, to lead the Haryana BJP as its president.
A two-time former Congress MLA from Barnala, Punjab, Mr Dhillon had joined the BJP in 2022 and was appointed as the vice-president of the state unit. He is considered close to former Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh, who had also joined the BJP in 2022 about a year after his bitter parting with the Congress. Mr Dhillon replaces Sunil Jakhar, who was appointed as the Punjab BJP president in July 2023. Mr Jakhar had also joined the BJP in 2022, ending his long association with the Congress.
Mr Debroy (44), a first-time MLA from Matabar, succeeds Rajib Bhattacharya as Tripura chief of the ruling party.
According to separate notifications issued by BJP national general secretary Arun Singh, all the aforementioned appointments come into force with immediate effect.
