List of recently declared office bearers dominated by leaders loyal to Bhupendra Yadav and Nityananda Rai.
NEW DELHI: The list of the recently declared office bearers of the Bihar unit of BJP, released on Friday evening, is dominated by the leaders loyal to party general secretary-in-charge of Bihar, Bhupendra Yadav, and Union minister Nityananda Rai. The present state party president, Sanjay Jaiswal, is also seen as someone who is close to the duo of Yadav and Rai.
These new appointments, according to state party leaders, marks the end of the decades old dominance of senior party leader and BJP’s Bihar face, Sushil Modi, as none of his close associates were given any important posts. Till very recently, Modi’s consent was considered as paramount before announcing any appointments in the state organisation. His close associate and former state president Mangal Pandey, too, could not secure anything important for his proteges. Supporter of other prominent leaders from Bihar like Ashwini Choubey and Giriraj Singh, too, had little to cheer about when the list came out.
Former Rajya Sabha MP R.K. Sinha’s son Rituraj Sinha, who held the post of secretary in the state BJP, was dropped.
A party leader said the new team was of Bhupendra and Nityanand. “Eighty percent of them are from the Yadav camp (referring to Bhupendra and Nityanand Rai who also belongs to the Yadav community). The era of Sushil Modi, Mangal Pandey, Nand Kishore Yadav is over now. Jaiswal, while approving the names, went by whatever Bhupendra and Nityanand told him,” he said. The same observation was confirmed by a young leader who has been with the party for the last 10 years now. According to him, now the two poles of BJP in Bihar were the two Yadavs.
“Those who are close to them have gained, those who are not, have been ignored,” he said.
Party MLA Sanjeev Chaurasia, son of Sikkim Governor, Ganga Prasad, was made one of the general secretaries in the Jaiswal team. He was holding the same post when the BJP was led by Mangal Pandey in 2015.
The new team has been constituted with the 2020 Assembly elections in mind. Like the RJD and JDU, the BJP, too, has given preference to the OBCs and extremely backward classes while making the appointments. As per the caste breakup of the recent appointments made by Jaiswal, shared by the party leaders, the forwards have got 17 posts, backwards 13, extremely backwards 7, Dalits 3, Muslim 1 and 8 are from the Vaishya community, to which Jaiswal himself belongs.