New Delhi: In a major reshuffle ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in the next year, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president J P Nadda appointed new party chiefs in four states on Thursday, including poll-bound Rajasthan. The other states are Bihar, Delhi and Odisha.
The new four appointees include OBC leader and MLC Samrat Choudhary in Bihar, Lok Sabha member CP Joshi in Rajasthan and former state minister Manmohan Samal in Odisha.
It began with the BJP state president in Delhi, Virendra Sachdeva, a prominent Punjabi face who had been the interim state president for the past three months and now has been re-appointed for the full term. Sachdeva had been active since he took the charge of his predecessor Adesh Gupta after the MCD poll debacle in the national Capital. Under his leadership, BJP seems to be active in demonstrations against the Kejriwal government and the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party. Along with this, Delhi BJP has started appearing more aggressive than before. This is probably the reason why he has got his full term.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to stop the ongoing infighting in Rajasthan BJP, Lok Sabha MP CP Joshi replaced the current state president Satish Punia. Joshi is a Brahmin face and a second-time Lok Sabha member from Chittorgarh. Reportedly, the erstwhile state president Satish Punia did not share amicable equations with former chief minister Vasundhara Raje who remains the BJP’s most formidable leader in the state.
On the other hand, Member of the Legislative Council Samrat Chowdhary has been appointed as the new Bihar party president. The erstwhile president Sanjay Jaiswal’s term ended in November last year. Chowdhary had been in JD-U earlier.
Meanwhile, according to the party sources, the new appointments will be able to bolster the mass support in the upcoming general elections for the saffron party in the respective states. Chowdhary, belongs to the Kushwaha or Koeri caste in Bihar, which is having a voting strength of 8 per cent in Bihar. Earlier, he joined JD-U from RJD and then joined BJP and now has been appointed BJP’s Bihar unit’s state president. Chowdhary was also the Panchayati Raj minister in the NDA government in the state.
Former state minister of the BJP-BJD government in Odisha, Manmohan Samal, has been appointed the new BJP state president. Samal had been Odisha’s Revenue and Natural Disaster minister from 2004 to 2009. As the three-year tenure of present Odisha BJP president Samir Mohanty has been completed, the party has appointed a new president. Samal played a vital role in the party’s victory in the by-poll to the Dhamnagar Assembly seat held in November last year.