BJP makes changes at key positions eyeing LS polls

Sun, 21 August 2022

15:22

Its eyes fixed on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to continue with changes at key positions in its several state units to address organisational issues and emerging political challenges.

The recent revamp of its apex organisational body, parliamentary board, may have made more news for its omissions of Union minister Nitin Gadkari and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, but the BJP has also made it more socially and regionally representative.

For the first time, non-upper castes are in a majority in the board, as the party continues with its outreach to traditionally weaker and backward sections of society.

Before that, the BJP top brass had effected changes in several states and is now likely to appoint a new president of its Uttar Pradesh unit and bring in some new faces in Bihar where its traditional calculation has been upended after the JD-U dumped it and joined hands with the RJD-Congress-Left combine.

In the last few weeks, the BJP has appointed state presidents in Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh and shuffled people manning crucial positions in several states, including Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and West Bengal.

The ruling party had reaped a bumper harvest in most of these states in 2019 and made major gains in Bengal and Telangana.

There has also been speculation about the fate of Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.

Critics have questioned his leadership abilities in a state where the opposition Congress remains a strong force but the BJP has so far ruled out any change.

Its decision to include BS Yediyurappa, the ageing but still-powerful Lingayat leader, in the parliamentary board though highlights its continuing attempt to sharpen its social outreach in its lone southern stronghold.

Giving Sunil Bansal, its high profile UP general secretary in charge of the organisation, a national role is as much an acknowledgment of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's pre-eminence in the state's affairs as of its faith in Bansal's abilities amid talks of differences between the two leaders on several issues. -- PTI

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