The RSS influence is waning in the BJP going by the organisational reshuffle under party president J.P. Nadda. This is visible in the exit of Ram Madhav and Muralidhar Rao as general secretaries along with Anil Jain and Saroj Pandey. Moreover, ‘outsiders’ like Trinamool Congress imports Mukul Roy and Anupam Hazra have been accommodated as office-bearers, with an eye on the West Bengal elections next year. Roy, a former Mamata Banerjee loyalist, has been made BJP vice president and Hazra has edged out Rahul Sinha, a party veteran from the state, as national secretary. Sinha, who once headed the state unit, has made his displeasure public. “For 40 years I have served the BJP as a soldier. I have to step aside because a Trinamool Congress leader is coming—there can be nothing more unfortunate than this reward for serving the BJP since birth,” he said in a video message on Twitter.
Poll-bound Bihar is another factor in the reshuffle, with former Union minister Radha Mohan Singh being inducted as vice president and Bihar MLC Sanjay Mayukh being elevated as national spokesperson. The stamp of Nadda’s predecessor Amit Shah is also visible in the new team—Bhupendra Yadav, Kailash Vijayvargia and Arun Singh, who enjoy the home minister’s confidence, have been made general secretaries. Yadav, in fact, has found a place in the teams of all the party presidents in the recent past—Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, Shah and now Nadda.
Also, signalling that the party is happy with its social media cell, Amit Malviya has been retained as the IT and social media in-charge. Bangalore (South) MP Tejasvi Surya has replaced Poonam Mahajan as president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha. Party leaders say the changes have been made to give representation to different regions and sections. “New faces have been introduced in the team of national office-bearers from states where the party is trying to strengthen its leadership, besides giving more representation to youth, women and other leaders from across the country, including the Northeast and states where BJP’s organisational structure needs to be strengthened,” says a senior leader.
Those who have been accommodated as general secretaries include NTR’s daughter D. Purandeswari and C.T. Ravi from the South, Tarun Chugh from Punjab and Dilip Saikia from Assam. D.K. Gautam, a prominent Dalit face, has been moved from the post of party vice president to general secretary.
In an indication of how important messaging is for the BJP, the team of national spokespersons has been expanded from 10 to 23. While some like Meenakshi Lekhi and G.V.L. Narasimha Rao have been removed from the panel, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who lost out on a Cabinet berth, Aparajita Sarangi from Odisha, Rajiv Chandrashekhar from Karnataka, Guru Prakash from Bihar and Raju Bista from West Bengal have been inducted.
