Shah to give Team BJP a facelift ahead of 2019 general election

NEW DELHI: The resignation of six ministers from the Narendra Modi government and the Sunday expansion of his council of ministers also set in motion the revamp of the BJP.

Kalraj Mishra, Bandaru Dattatreya, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Mahendra Nath Pandey, Sanjiv Balyan and Faggan Singh Kulaste resigned as ministers ahead of the Sunday reshuffle.

BJP sources said party president Amit Shah was expected to replace some leaders of his team with new faces, an exercise aimed at fine-tuning the organisation ahead of the 2019 polls.

Rudy and Balyan could be brought in as national general secretaries of the party, sources said. The party can have a maximum of 13 vice presidents, nine general secretaries and 15 secretaries. At present, Shah’s team has seven vice-presidents and general secretaries each and 11 secretaries. Five of the seven general secretaries have never contested a direct election.

VACANCIES

The vacancy in the team was created following party leaders taking up ministerial jobs in states.

BJP secretaries Siddharth Nath Singh, Mahendra Singh and Shrikant Sharma became ministers in Uttar Pradesh.

The BJP also appointed junior HRD minister Mahendra Pandey as the chief of its UP unit in place of Keshav Prasad Maurya, who is now a deputy chief minister.

Party’s national vice president Dinesh Sharma, too, has been appointed deputy CM. He was the in charge of Gujarat. Jharkhand in charge Trivendra Singh Rawat became the Uttarakhand CM.