BJP rejigs team for Lok Sabha polls: Tariq Mansoor named vice president in big Pasmanda Muslim push

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, July 29

The BJP on Saturday revamped the national team of office-bearers and appointed Tariq Mansoor, a leading Pasmanda Muslim from Uttar Pradesh and a former vice chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University as national vice president among 13.

Mansoor’s appointment is the top hallmark of BJP chief JP Nadda’s new team which also gives place to MP Sanjay Bandi, who was recently dropped as Telangana BJP chief, and Anil Antony, the son of Congress veteran AK Antony. Anil had joined the BJP recently and will contest the next Lok Sabha election.

Nadda has finalised 13 national vice presidents (as against 12 previously); kept the number of general secretaries unchanged by dropping Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra in charge CT Ravi and Dilip Saikia from Assam. Sanjay Bandi (Telangana) and Radhamohan Agarwal (UP) have replaced Ravi and Saikia in the new team.

Among national vice presidents, Nadda has retained former Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh, Rajasthan ex-CM Vasundhara Raje, Jharkhand ex-CM Raghubar Das, Saudan Singh, Baijayant Panda, Rekha Verma, DK Aruna (Telangana), M Chuba Ao (Nagaland) and Abdulla Kutty (Kerala).

New entrants in the list are Saroj Pande from poll-bound Chhattisgarh, Laxmikant Bajpai from UP, Lata Usendi from Chhattisgarh and Tariq Mansoorm, currently member, UP Legislative Council.

Former minister Radha Mohan Singh, former Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh, and Gujarat Lok Sabha MP Bhartiben Shyal have been dropped as national vice presidents.

Arun Singh, Kailash Vijayvargiya, Sudhyant Gautam, Tarun Chugh, Vinod Tawde and Sunil Bansal stay as general secretaries.

BL Santosh, BJP general secretary organisation — a link between the RSS and the party — also stays, so does his deputy joint general secretary organisation Shiv Prakash.

The number of secretaries remains the same –13.

Those retained in the list are Vijaya Rahatkar, Maharashtra; Satya Kumar, Andhra Pradesh; Arvind Menon, Delhi; OP Dhruve, Madhya Pradesh; Anupam Hazra, West Bengal; Alka Gurjar, Rajasthan; Asha Lakra, Jharkhand; Rituraj Sinha, Bihar; and Narendra Singh Raina, Punjab.

Pankaja Munde, the sulking daughter of late BJP veteran Gopinath Munde, has been brought in as national BJP secretary from Maharashtra along with Kamakhya Prasad from Assam, Surendra Singh Nagar, a Rajya Sabha MP from UP, and Anil Antony from Kerala.

Among those dropped as secretaries are Vinod Sonkar, Sunil Deodhar and Harish Dwivedi (Lok Sabha MP from UP’s Basti).

Deodhar was Narendra Modi’s campaign manager in Varanasi in 2014.

The revamp is in line with PM Narendra Modi’s public stand of empowering Pasmanda Muslims, who are OBCs among the Muslims.

Recently, the Yogi Adityanath government in UP had nominated Mansoor to the state legislative council. Earlier, Yogi had named Pasmanda Muslim Danish Ansari in his cabinet.

Inclusion of Bandi as general secretary is in recognition of his ground work in Telangana.

Several new appointments from Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and UP are meant to boost party prospects in these states ahead of state and Lok Sabha polls.

Nadda has retained Rajesh Agarwal as treasurer.

The new team has 13 vice presidents, eight general secretaries and 13 secretaries.