With elections to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly eight months away, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday rejigged and expanded its team of state unit office-bearers. Only seven members of the outgoing team found a place in the new team.
In the new team of office-bearers, the party increased the representation of leaders from Other Backward Classes (OBCs), as well as leaders from eastern UP. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in UP, the BJP suffered losses in eastern UP amid the Samajwadi Party’s emphasis on its “PDA” (pichhda, Dalit and alpsankhyak) social coalition.
The new team of office-bearers has more women than the outgoing team. It also has sizeable representation of leaders who trace the roots of their political careers to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the students’ wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
According to the list issued by state BJP President Pankaj Chaudhary, the party appointed 19 vice-presidents, eight general secretaries and 19 secretaries in its 46-member team, which is marginally bigger than the outgoing 41-member team. In addition, it replaced all six regional presidents, including those of Bundelkhand, Gorakhpur, Awadh and Varanasi.
Chaudhary, who is Union Minister of State for Finance, was elected BJP Uttar Pradesh unit chief in December. Senior party leaders held several rounds of consultations with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the central leadership in the run-up to announcing the list.
Western UP leader and former state minister Suresh Rana, who was arrested in 2013 for his alleged role in the Muzaffarnagar riots and was a key organiser for the party in the recently concluded West Bengal Assembly polls, was inducted as a state vice-president, as was expelled Samajwadi Party legislator Pooja Pal. The wife of late Bahujan Samaj Party legislator Raju Pal, she was expelled by the Samajwadi Party last year for alleged anti-party activities after she praised Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Rana had lost the 2022 Assembly polls.
Neeraj Singh has replaced his brother Pankaj Singh, an MLA from UP’s Noida, as a vice-president. The two are sons of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. Pankaj Singh had been an office-bearer in the BJP’s UP state unit team continuously since 2010.
