NEW DELHI, Aug 22: BJP national president Nitin Nabin on Saturday held his first meeting with the party’s newly appointed national office-bearers, with discussions focusing on preparations for upcoming Assembly elections, grassroots mobilisation and outreach to the public.
According to party sources, the meeting reviewed the BJP’s electoral strategy and ways to strengthen its organisational presence at the grassroots level. Leaders also discussed communicating the achievements and initiatives of the BJP-led government to the people.
Further meetings are scheduled later in the day, with BJP state presidents, state in-charges and chief ministers of party-ruled states expected to participate, the sources said.
The BJP announced its new national team under Nabin earlier this week. The 65-member team includes 51 new faces, marking the party’s most significant organisational reshuffle in more than a decade.
The new team has 13 national vice presidents, including former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia and former RSS functionary Ram Madhav. Former Union minister Smriti Irani has been appointed as one of the eight national general secretaries.
B L Santhosh has been retained as national general secretary (organisation), while Vinod Tawde and Sunil Bansal will continue as national general secretaries.
The team includes 12 women and six leaders from minority communities.
Union Minister Piyush Goyal has been appointed national treasurer, a position he held before joining the Union Cabinet in 2014.
The party has also made changes to its youth and IT wings. Amit Malviya has been replaced as head of the BJP’s IT department by Deepak Mhaskey of Chhattisgarh, while Gujarat leader Hemang Joshi has been appointed Yuva Morcha president in place of Lok Sabha MP Tejasvi Surya.
The organisational overhaul comes more than a decade after the last major reshuffle of this scale in 2015, when Amit Shah was the BJP president.
The changes have also triggered speculation about a possible reshuffle of the Union Cabinet.
