File Photo: BJP Leader & Member of Parliament Varun Gandhi
Varun Gandhi was dropped as the General Secretary of the party by BJP president Amit Shah who constituted his new team, inducting former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa as the Vice President and new RSS pointsman Ram Madhav as the General Secretary.
A week after his formal anointment as party President, Mr Shah announced his new team of party office bearers that includes 11 Vice Presidents, eight General Secretaries and 14 Secretaries.
The new team also includes 10 party Spokespersons, five of whom are new.
While dropping Sultanpur MP Varun Gandhi, whose mother Maneka Gandhi is a minister in the Modi government, Mr Shah has retained General Secretaries JP Nadda, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Murlidhar Rao and Ramlal, who will continue to take care of the organisation's affairs.
Party sources said that Varun Gandhi has not been included because his mother has been inducted in the Modi Cabinet.
The four new General Secretaries are Ram Madhav, the RSS face who was sent to the party recently, outgoing BJP Mahila Morcha chief Saroj Pandey, Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan Bhupendra Yadav and Ram Shankar Katheriya.
Mr Yeddyurappa, had formed his own outfit after being forced to quit as chief minister following corruption charges had rejoined BJP just before the Lok Sabha elections. He is among the 11 Vice Presidents in Mr Shah's new team. Former Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has been retained as Vice President.
The other Vice Presidents are Bandaru Dattatreya and Satyapal Malik, both Lok Sabha members, Purushottam Rupala and Prabhat Jha, former state unit presidents and Raghuvar Das, a former deputy chief minister of Jharkhand.
Kiran Maheshwari (a former MP from Rajasthan), Vinay Sahasrabuddhe (one of the BJP's think-tank), Renu Devi (from Bihar) and Lucknow Mayor Dinesh Sharma are also taken as Vice Presidents.
A BALANCE OF YOUTH AND EXPERIENCEThe team has a mix of party workers from across the country but has major representation from poll-bound states of Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand. The team also includes five OBCs, six women and has representation from SCs and STs as well. 80 per cent of Mr Shah's team are below the age of 60.
Mr Shah's new team has 14 secretaries. Shrikant Sharma, who heads the media unit of the party, is one of the new Secretaries.
Siddharth Nath Singh, who was in charge of West Bengal where the party registered some success in the Lok Sabha polls, has also been retained as one of the Secretaries.
Former union minister Pramod Mahajan's daughter Poonam Mahajan has also been made a Secretary.
Other party Secretaries are Shyam Jaju, Anil Jain, H Raja, Ramesh Deka, Sudha Yadav, Ram Shekar Netam, Arun Singh, R P Singh, Jyoti Dhruve, Tarun Chugh and Rajneesh Kumar.
The new team has retained Anurag Thakur as the Youth Wing chief and appointed former Aurangabad Mayor Vijaya Rahatkar as the new Mahila Morcha chief.
The five spokespersons who have been retained in Amit Shah's team are MJ Akbar, Shahnawaz Hussain, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Meenakshi Lekhi and Vijay Sonkar Shastri.
The new spokespersons are Nalin Kohli, Sambit Patra, Anil Baluni, GVL Narasimha Rao and Lalita Kumaramangalam.
Among the new secretaries, Shrikant Sharma and Sidharth Nath Singh have been given the responsibility of the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.