New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday announced its new national office-bearers under party president Nitin Nabin, ending a wait of more than 200 days for the new organisational team. The announcement came within hours of a report published by The Sunday Guardian on Sunday pointing out that Nabin had completed more than 200 days as BJP president without his national team being announced.
The new team has 65 appointments across national office-bearers, organisational responsibilities, Morcha leadership and media and social-media positions, compared with 43 names in the existing team. Fourteen members of the existing team have been retained in some capacity, while 29 no longer figure in the new structure. The remaining 51 names in the new 65-member announcement were not part of the existing 43-member list. Several of those retained have, however, been moved to different responsibilities.
The changes are particularly pronounced at the vice-president level. Vasundhara Raje, Baijayant Jay Panda, Rekha Verma and Tariq Mansoor continue as vice-presidents. Saudan Singh, who was a vice-president in the existing team, has returned to the position of joint general secretary (organisation).
The new vice-presidential team also includes Tirath Singh Rawat, Ram Madhav, D. Purandeshwari, Varshaben Narendrabhai Doshi, Dr Bharti Pravin Pawar, Manpreet Singh Badal, Lal Singh Arya, Prof. M. Nagaraja and Dr Madhuchandra Kar.
Saudan Singh’s had earlier served as joint general secretary (organisation) before being moved to the post of national vice-president. He continued as a vice-president in the existing team and has now returned to the joint general secretary (organisation) position. Shiv Prakash continues in the same position, while B.L. Santhosh remains general secretary (organisation).
The general-secretary layer has been substantially recast. Vinod Tawde and Sunil Bansal have been retained from the existing team and are joined by Biplab Kumar Deb, Smriti Irani, Dr Satish Poonia, Gajendra Patel, Harish Dwivedi and Sanjay Bhatia.
The national secretary layer has expanded to 16 positions. Surendra Singh Nagar and Anil Antony are retained from the existing team. The new secretaries include Kavita Patidar, K. Surendran, Dr Bhola Singh, Dr Pradip Varma, Jagdish Ishwarbhai Patel, Dr Sandeep Pathak, Phangnon Konyak, Sangeeta Yadav, Dr M. Venkateshan, Manoj Tigga, Siddharth Shambhu, Dr Swadesh Singh, Mriganka Deo Barman, Rohan Gupta and Jai Prakash.
Those dropped from the existing team include Saroj Pandey, D.K. Aruna, M. Chuba Ao, Abdulla Kutty, Laxmikant Bajpai, Lata Usendi, Arun Singh, Dushyant Kumar Gautam, Radha Mohan Das Agarwal, Arvind Menon, Pankaja Munde, Narendra Singh, Alka Gujar, Omprakash Dhurve, Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Om Prakash Dhankar, Rajesh Agarwal, Naresh Bansal, Mahendra Kumar, Amit Malviya, Tejasvi Surya, Vanathi Srinivasan, K. Laxman, Rajkumar Chahar, Samir Oraon, Jamal Siddiqui and Sanjay Mayukh.
The changes extend beyond the conventional office-bearer hierarchy. Piyush Goyal has been appointed treasurer and Rajesh Mangal joint treasurer. Mahendra Pandey has been appointed Central Office Secretary, while Tarun Chugh, who was part of the existing team, becomes Central Office In-charge. Dr Sambit Patra has been appointed North-East Coordinator, Rajiv Babbar North-East Joint Coordinator and Vishnu Datt Sharma All Cells Coordinator. Rituraj Sinha and Vishnu Vardhan Reddy have been appointed All Cells Joint Coordinators.
The party has also changed the leadership of its frontal organisations.
Dr Hemang Joshi has been appointed Yuva Morcha president, Roop Kumari Choudhary Mahila Morcha president, Amarpal Maurya OBC Morcha president, Bansilal Gurjar Kisan Morcha president, Shivesh Kumar Ram SC Morcha president, Dr Mannalal Rawat ST Morcha president and Kunwar Basit Ali Minority Morcha president.
The communications apparatus has been reworked as well. Anil Baluni has been appointed media convenor, continuing as the BJP’s media head, a responsibility he has held since 2017. Ashish Usha Agarwal, Pradeep Bhandari and Siddharth Yadav have been appointed media co-convenors. Agarwal, who belongs to Gwalior, has impressed the party leadership with his handling of the media in Madhya Pradesh and has been promoted to the national team on the strength of that work. The new arrangement also marks the removal of Sanjay Mayukh, who had served as media co-incharge under Baluni. The Sunday Guardian had earlier reported that Mayukh was likely to be removed from the post.
Deepak Mhaskey has been appointed social media convenor, while Priti Gandhi, Shivanand Dwivedi, Alok Bhatt and Arun Yadav are the social media co-convenors. Mhaskey, who belongs to Dhamtari in Chhattisgarh, has worked closely with Nabin and handled the BJP’s social media campaign in the state during the last two Assembly election cycles. His appointment brings a trusted digital campaign hand from Nabin’s Chhattisgarh organisational stint into the national structure.
The return of Ram Madhav is among the significant appointments in the new structure. Madhav has previously served as BJP national general secretary and handled important organisational responsibilities in the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir.
Smriti Irani’s appointment as general secretary brings a prominent former Union minister and national campaigner into the organisational hierarchy.
The organisational centre of the new team is expected to revolve around Smriti Irani, B.L. Santhosh, Saudan Singh, Shiv Prakash, Vinod Tawde, Sunil Bansal and Baijayant Panda. The group brings together senior organisational functionaries and political managers with experience of handling important state and national responsibilities.
Two of the appointments are also seen within the party as leaders close to Union Minister Bhupendra Yadav. One occupies a significant position in the new organisational hierarchy, while the other has a relatively lower-profile responsibility.
The composition of the new team also reflects an emphasis on geographical and social diversity. The BJP’s assessment of the new team places representation from 23 states and Union Territories. The Northeast receives particular attention, with three leaders from the region, one each from Tripura, Assam and Nagaland, finding a place in the team. The North-East Coordination Cell will continue under Sambit Patra.
The team includes four tribal representatives, one each from West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and the Northeast, with two of them women. Three members from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh represent the Scheduled Castes.
The BJP’s assessment also highlights religious diversity, identifying one Sikh, two Christian, one Muslim, one Jain and one Parsi member in the national office-bearer team. More than 40 per cent of the team, according to the BJP’s assessment, belongs to deprived communities.
The new structure brings substantial administrative and political experience. It includes three former Chief Ministers, Vasundhara Raje, Tirath Singh Rawat and Biplab Kumar Deb, alongside several former state presidents. Four leaders have previous Union Government experience and one is a sitting Union Minister. Eighteen active Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members have also been brought into the national structure, adding legislative experience to the party’s organisational apparatus.
The team also has a wide academic and professional mix, including two professors, four practising doctors, PhD holders, engineers, chartered accountants and lawyers. The new Morcha appointments add another layer of ground-level organisational experience and domain expertise.
Women account for 12 of the 65 appointments in the full six-page BJP announcement, or 18.5 per cent. They include Vasundhara Raje Scindia, D. Purandeshwari, Rekha Verma, Varshaben Narendrabhai Doshi, Dr Bharti Pravin Pawar, Dr Madhuchandra Kar, Smriti Irani, Kavita Patidar, Phangnon Konyak, Sangeeta Yadav, Roop Kumari Choudhary and Priti Gandhi.
The existing 43-member team had eight women, accounting for 18.6 per cent. They were Vasundhara Raje, Saroj Pandey, D.K. Aruna and Lata Usendi among the vice-presidents, Pankaja Munde and Alka Gujar among the national secretaries, and Vanathi Srinivasan as Mahila Morcha president, along with one other woman in the existing list.
The new structure therefore increases the number of women by four in absolute terms, while their share of the overall team remains broadly unchanged.
The 51 names not present in the existing list should not automatically be viewed as political newcomers. Several of the leaders entering Nabin’s team have held important political or organisational positions previously. Biplab Kumar Deb, Tirath Singh Rawat, Manpreet Singh Badal, Bharti Pawar and Piyush Goyal, for instance, bring substantial political or ministerial experience.
