File Photo: BJP President Amit Shah.
BJP President Amit Shah today restructured the party set-up assigning key roles to his confindants Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, Kailash Vijayvargiya and M J Akbar and constituting new departments relating to good governance, coordination with states and media relations.
The constitution of the new departments comes after Shah had dissolved all cells of the organization a few months ago and a need was being felt to tone up the party's media presence in the wake of mounting attacks by opposition on BJP governments at the Centre and states.
There are 18 departments in the newly set-up including the one on Good Governance, Central and State Government programmes co-ordination for which Shah appointed party vice President Sahasrabuddhe, Sidharth Nath Singh, Maheish Girri and Raj Shekhar.
Mr Sahasrabuddhe has also been given the task of running the new department of Policy Research along with the Director of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Foundation Anirban Ganguly and Vikshut.
Party's National Secretary Shrikant Sharma has once again been assigned the task of running the media cell. He was earlier the head of the media cell.
In a first of its kind, the party has set up a media relations department to help improve is media outreach, which will be run by veteran journalist and party MP M J Akbar, Shrikant Sharma, Sidharth Nath Singh, Anil Baluni and Swadesh Verma.
Party General Secretary Bhupendra Yadav will look after Election Management.
Party general secretary Murlidhar Rao has been asked to look after Training department as in-charge in which he will be assisted by Mahesh Sharma, Convenor, and Sunil Pande as Co-Convenor. Rao is already working on the training of party's new members.
Mr Vijayvargiya, along with Mr Akbar, will also take care of the new department of political feedback and response.
Party Vice President Shyam Jaju and Vikash Preetam will look after Publicity Literature department while another Vice President Prabhat Jha will will look after party journals and publication department. Jha will be assisted by Shiv Shakti, Sudha Malaiya, Bala Shankar and Mukesh Mishra.
Mr Arvind Gupta will continue to look after the Department of IT, website and social media management while Party MP Rajendra Agrawal will take care of Election Commission department along with Om Pathak, Ramakrishanan, Narendra Sawaikar and Rajan Khosla.
Mr Vijay Chauthaiwale continues to head the Foreign Affairs department while Jaideep Dhankar has been assigned the task of
running the Legal Affairs department along with Bikram Banerjee, Aishwarya Bhat and Sagar.
Mr Gopal Krishna Agrawal has been assigned Coordination of Trusts, Vijay Goyel, along with Naveen Sinha, will look after Sahyog and Disaster Relief Services.
Another key functionary Mr Arun Singh, who was elevated recently, has been made the in-charge of President's Office, Tours and Programmes.
Mr Anil Jain will look after the Department of National Programmes and Meetings along with R P Singh.