India / BJP names new office bearers; Raman Singh, Vasundhara Raje among national VPs

New Delhi: In a major overhaul within the ranks of Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP national president Jagat Prakash Nadda on Saturday shuffled some top posts with a few names being dropped and few faces being introduced from states where the party is trying to develop the leadership.

Former Union minister Gopinath Munde's daughter Pankaja has also been appointed the national secretary of the party and former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje has been appointed as BJP vice president.

Young turks have been given special chances in Team Nadda. Karnataka MP Tejasvi Surya is now BJP's new Yuva Morcha head. Anil Baluni, in spite of his health issues, will continue to head the media section, while Sanjay Mayukh will remain as his deputy.

Ram Madhav, P Muralidhar Rao, Anil Jain, Saroj Pandey as general secretaries with new faces in a reshuffle of the party's office bearers.

The party increased the number of national spokespersons to 23 with MP Anil Baluni retaining the position of media in-charge and elevated as chief spokesperson.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed the changes on Twitter.

Congratulations and best wishes to the new team. I am confident they will uphold the glorious tradition of our Party of serving the people of India selflessly and with dedication. May they work hard to empower the poor and marginalised. https://t.co/5beiCTkcsA

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 26, 2020

The new spokespersons include Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Sanju Verma, Iqbal Singh Lalpura, Aparajita Sarangi, Heena Gavit, M Kikon, Nupur Sharma, Raju Bisht and KK Sharma.

Other prominent names that figure in the list of 13 national secretaries are Maharashtra's Vinod Tawade, UP's Vinod Sonkar, and Maharashtra's Pankaja Munde.

The new appointments were announced by BJP president JP Nadda in a reorganisation that party sources had said was aimed at combining young people, women as well as experienced faces.

Radha Mohan Singh, Mukul Roy, Rekha Verma, Annapurna Devi, Bharti Shiyal, DK Aruna, M Chuba Ao, AP Abdullakutty were appointed national vice presidents in the reshuffle.

Among the new general secretaries appointed were Dushyant Kumar Gautam, D Purandeswari, CT Ravi and Tarun Chugh.Ram Madhav reacted to the new appointments on Twitter, saying, "Congratulations to the newly appointed office-bearers of d BJP. Grateful to d party leadership for providing me d opportunity to serve for one term as Gen Sec."