MURALEEDHARAN MADE ANDHRA BJP INCHARGE

NEW DELHI : BJP president Amit Shah on Monday appointed Rajya Sabha member V Muraleedharan as party’s in-charge in Andhra Pradesh, and brought in three new faces in the team of national office bearers, a party release said.

P S Sreedharan Pillai will be the BJP chief in Kerala where the post was lying vacant after appointment of Kummanam Rajasekharan as Mizoram governor in May this year.

P S Sreedharan Pillai, a lawyer by profession, served as Kerala BJP chief between 2003 and 2006.

Bharatiya Janata Party’s Scheduled Caste Morcha’s former chief Dushyant Kumar Gautam has been appointed vice president, and Sunil Deodhar and Satya Kumar as national secretary.

Dushyant Kumar Gautam is the only SC leader in the current BJP’S team of office bearers.

Sunil Deodhar, who had an uneasy relationship with Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb, has been shifted out of the north-eastern state and sent to Andhra Pradesh as co in-charge.

Andhra Pradesh will have simultaneous assembly and parliamentary election in 2019, and the Bharatiya Janata Party is engaged in a pitched battle with its former ally, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), over special category status to the southern state.

Satya Kumar is a former aide of Vice-president M Venkaiah Naidu.