Giving emphasis to organisational matters and restructuring of various state units, BJP president J P Nadda has moved two former Chief Ministers – Biplab Deb from Tripura as in-charge of Haryana and Vijay Rupani from Gujarat as Prabhari for Punjab and Chandigarh.
In his latest order, the saffron party’s national president has appointed former Union Minister Mahesh Sharma as new in-charge of BJP for the poll bound Tripura.
In a crucial move, Mangal Pandey has been tasked with the assignment to cater to West Bengal — where BJP had won 18 seats in 2019 and would be setting a much higher target for 2024 polls.
For the Bihar unit, the new Prabhari will be Vinod Tawde, a Maharashtra-based leader and who till recently was holding charge of Haryana. Saha-Prabhari or Co-in charge for Bihar will be Harish Dwivedi.
Former Union Minister Prakash Javadekar, who has handled elections in states such as Karnataka and Rajasthan in 2018, has been made in-charge of Kerala. He will be supported by co-in charge Radha Mohan Agarwal.
For Telangana, the new in-charge will be Tarun Chugh, who was involved in organisational matters in the party headquarters. The BJP, which aims to make a deeper penetration in the state ruled by KCR family of TRS will have Arvind Menon as co-incharge.
Menon is an able organisation man and has handled states such as West Bengal and UP earlier.
For Rajasthan, which will go to the polls in Nov-Dec 2023, the new in-charge will be Arun Singh while Ms Vijaya Rahatkar will be the Saha Prabhari. For Madhya Pradesh, which also faces polls next year, the in charge will be P Murlidhar Rao and there will be two co-in charges Ms Pankaja Munda and Ram Shankar Katheria.
Chhattisgarh too goes to the polls along with Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh next year; and here BJP Prabhari will be Om Mathur while Nitin Nabin will be Saha Prabhari.
BJP’s prominent TV face and national spokesman Sambit Patra will be coordinator for northeastern states while Rituraj Sinha will be the joint coordinator.
Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya go to the polls by Feb-March 2023 while another northeastern state Mizoram is slated for polls by Nov-December next year.
For the state of West Bengal, while Mangal Pandey will be the in-charge; he would be assisted by Amit Malviya and Ms Asha Lakra as Saha Prabharis.
Mr Pandey is MLC from Bihar and was the President of the BJP, Bihar, between 2013 and 2017.
