01-30-2007, 02:35 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>BJP reshuffle has many surprises </b>
Pioneer.com
Rajeev Ranjan Roy | New Delhi
Rajnath Singh retains old faces except Sanjay Joshi
Narendra Modi removed from Central Parliamentary Board
Gopinath Munde comes in place of Pramod Mahajan
The new team of Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh declared on Monday saw the baptism of former Maharashtra deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde and senior RSS Pracharak Ram Lal as general secretaries.
Singh has retained most of the old faces, but the removal of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi from the Central Parliamentary Board and exit of Arun Jaitley as chief spokesperson of the party has come as a surprise. <b>Modi was the only Chief Minister to be on the party's Parliamentary Board.</b>
Jaitley would continue as a general secretary and also the secretary of the Central Parliamentary Board. Instead of 10, the board has now 11 members. The new entrants are Balasaheb Apte, Ananth Kumar and Thawar Chand Gehlot.
Ram Lal replaced Sanjay Joshi as the organisational general secretary, while Munde filled up the vacancy caused by the death of Pramod Mahajan. Joshi had put in his papers as organisational general secretary in the wake of the compact disc controversy. He was later inducted after an investigation found the CD forged and orchestrated.
Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar, along with new entrant Rajiv Pratap Rudy will be the spokespersons of the party.
The reshuffle has significantly elevated the position of general secretary and MP Ananth Kumar. He has been made the secretary of the party's central election committee, an important post that once Mahajan used to hold.
Though Bihar happens to be a BJP stronghold, the new team does not have any representative from the State at the top level. The party used to have one vice-president from the State earlier. One post of vice-president went to former Union Minister and MP Yashwant Sinha, who represented Hazaribagh seat in Jharkhand in the last Lok Sabha. He replaces La Ganeshan, now Tamil Nadu unit party chief.
Syed Shah Nawaz Hussain, who recently won Bhagalpur seat, has been made the president of the minority morcha. Earlier he was a secretary. Similarly, Jual Oran, MP from Orissa, has been made a vice-president to fill up the void created by the exit of Babulal Marandi. Karuna Shukla, MP from Madhya Pradesh, replaces Sumitra Mahajan as vice-president.
Former Union Minister <b>Vijay Goel has been retained as a secretary, while the other secretaries are Dharmendra Pradhan, earlier president of the Yuva Morcha, senior journalist Balbir Punj, Prabhat Jha, Kiren Rijiju, Kiran Ghai, NI Reddy and S Thirunavukarsar. Ramdas Aggarwal is the new treasurer, while OP Kohli has replaced Ashwini Kumar</b> as the secretary of the BJP's parliamentary party office.
Former Union Minister and Lok Sabha MP Satya Narayan Jatiya, dropped as a member of the party's parliamentary board, has replaced Ramnath Kovind as the president of SC Morcha. Amit Thakkar is the new president of Yuva Morcha, while Anant Nayak would head the party's ST Morcha.
Asked about the dropping of Joshi from the new team, Prakash Javadekar said that Joshi had requested party president Rajnath Singh to relieve him of the responsibility. <b>"For the first time, the national executive of the party has 13 women, six SC and five ST members," he said</b>.
Observers see the new team as an attempt on the part of Rajnath Singh to run the organisation as a well-knit unit, retaining most of the office-bearers having worked under the leadership of former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani. "Though against existing vacancies, Singh has tried to accommodate his men, he did not disturb the existing officials except divesting Jaitley of chief spokesmanship," a party leader said.
<b>The new team of vice-presidents consists of: Kalyan Singh; Balasaheb Apte, Shanta Kumar, Saheb Singh Verma, Yashwant Sinha, MA Naqvi, Jual Oran, Kailash Meghwal and Karuna Shukla. The general secretaries are: Arun Jaitley, Ananth Kumar, Gopinath Munde, Vinay Katiyar, Thawar Chand Gehlot, OP Mathur and Ramlal</b>.
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Pioneer.com
Rajeev Ranjan Roy | New Delhi
Rajnath Singh retains old faces except Sanjay Joshi
Narendra Modi removed from Central Parliamentary Board
Gopinath Munde comes in place of Pramod Mahajan
The new team of Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh declared on Monday saw the baptism of former Maharashtra deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde and senior RSS Pracharak Ram Lal as general secretaries.
Singh has retained most of the old faces, but the removal of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi from the Central Parliamentary Board and exit of Arun Jaitley as chief spokesperson of the party has come as a surprise. <b>Modi was the only Chief Minister to be on the party's Parliamentary Board.</b>
Jaitley would continue as a general secretary and also the secretary of the Central Parliamentary Board. Instead of 10, the board has now 11 members. The new entrants are Balasaheb Apte, Ananth Kumar and Thawar Chand Gehlot.
Ram Lal replaced Sanjay Joshi as the organisational general secretary, while Munde filled up the vacancy caused by the death of Pramod Mahajan. Joshi had put in his papers as organisational general secretary in the wake of the compact disc controversy. He was later inducted after an investigation found the CD forged and orchestrated.
Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar, along with new entrant Rajiv Pratap Rudy will be the spokespersons of the party.
The reshuffle has significantly elevated the position of general secretary and MP Ananth Kumar. He has been made the secretary of the party's central election committee, an important post that once Mahajan used to hold.
Though Bihar happens to be a BJP stronghold, the new team does not have any representative from the State at the top level. The party used to have one vice-president from the State earlier. One post of vice-president went to former Union Minister and MP Yashwant Sinha, who represented Hazaribagh seat in Jharkhand in the last Lok Sabha. He replaces La Ganeshan, now Tamil Nadu unit party chief.
Syed Shah Nawaz Hussain, who recently won Bhagalpur seat, has been made the president of the minority morcha. Earlier he was a secretary. Similarly, Jual Oran, MP from Orissa, has been made a vice-president to fill up the void created by the exit of Babulal Marandi. Karuna Shukla, MP from Madhya Pradesh, replaces Sumitra Mahajan as vice-president.
Former Union Minister <b>Vijay Goel has been retained as a secretary, while the other secretaries are Dharmendra Pradhan, earlier president of the Yuva Morcha, senior journalist Balbir Punj, Prabhat Jha, Kiren Rijiju, Kiran Ghai, NI Reddy and S Thirunavukarsar. Ramdas Aggarwal is the new treasurer, while OP Kohli has replaced Ashwini Kumar</b> as the secretary of the BJP's parliamentary party office.
Former Union Minister and Lok Sabha MP Satya Narayan Jatiya, dropped as a member of the party's parliamentary board, has replaced Ramnath Kovind as the president of SC Morcha. Amit Thakkar is the new president of Yuva Morcha, while Anant Nayak would head the party's ST Morcha.
Asked about the dropping of Joshi from the new team, Prakash Javadekar said that Joshi had requested party president Rajnath Singh to relieve him of the responsibility. <b>"For the first time, the national executive of the party has 13 women, six SC and five ST members," he said</b>.
Observers see the new team as an attempt on the part of Rajnath Singh to run the organisation as a well-knit unit, retaining most of the office-bearers having worked under the leadership of former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani. "Though against existing vacancies, Singh has tried to accommodate his men, he did not disturb the existing officials except divesting Jaitley of chief spokesmanship," a party leader said.
<b>The new team of vice-presidents consists of: Kalyan Singh; Balasaheb Apte, Shanta Kumar, Saheb Singh Verma, Yashwant Sinha, MA Naqvi, Jual Oran, Kailash Meghwal and Karuna Shukla. The general secretaries are: Arun Jaitley, Ananth Kumar, Gopinath Munde, Vinay Katiyar, Thawar Chand Gehlot, OP Mathur and Ramlal</b>.
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