Purandhareswari, DK Aruna Get Plum Posts In BJP’s New National Team

HYDERABAD: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) J P Nadda sprang a few surprises in the new team of national office-bearers that he announced on Saturday. The surprises were specially dished out in the context of picking leaders from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The new list of party’s functionaries at the national level has an element of continuity as well as change.

The list of eight general secretaries, crucial organisation position in the party as they are the link between state and central leadership, has five new faces with Bhupender Yadav, Arun Singh and Kailash Vijayvargiya being retained.

However, Ram Madhav from Andhra Pradesh, P Muralidhar Rao from Telangana, Saroj Pandey and Anil Jain have been replaced with new faces.

Dushyant Kumar Gautam, D Purandeswari, C T Ravi, Tarun Chugh and Dilip Saikia are new choices as general secretaries.

In another interesting appointment, the BJP national chief picked senior leader and recent entrant into the party in Telangana D K Aruna as one of the national vice-presidents, signifying the importance being attached to her services in the state.

Also, former Telangana state unit chief of the party Dr Lakshman has been compensation with another suitable position. He was named the president of BJP's OBC National Morcha. The move is largely being seen as an attempt to placate the senior leader, who appeared to be sulking following his replacement with Bandi Sanjay as Telangana BJP chief.

In another significant move pertaining to Andhra Pradesh, Satya Kumar has been retained as the national secretary of the party. Satya Kumar had in the past worked as the OSD of Venkaiah Naidu prior to the latter's elevation as the Vice-President.

Party MP Tejasvi Surya, a fiery speaker, has been made the president of the party's youth wing in place of Poonam Mahajan.

The party has also expanded its list of spokespersons to 23, with MP Anil Baluni being elevated as the chief spokesperson and remaining its media head. But the most notable omission from the list of spokespersons is GVL Narasimha Rao, who failed to find a place this time.

The exact reasons for the omission of Ram Madhav, Muralidhar Rao and GVL Narasimha Rao, all three originally hailing from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, were not immediately known. However, the reconstitution comes amid speculation that Ram Madhav and GVL Narasimha Rao could be inducted into union council of ministers very soon as part of an imminent expansion.

There are quite a few ministerial berths are begging to be filled up in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s council of ministers. Two of the positions fell vacant due to the death of Ananth Kumar and Suresh Angadi, who died recently due to COVID-19. Also, Harsimrat Kaur Badal of Shiromani Akali Dal has recently resigned from the union cabinet in protest against the farm sector reforms that the Modi government has initiated.

This apart, new ministerial heads are also needed for several other portfolios to ease the burden on some ministers who have been shouldering multiple ministries. (With inputs from PTI)