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Lucknow: Defence minister Rajnath Singh’s younger son Neeraj Singh and ‘rebel’ SP MLA Pooja Pal made it to the list of BJP state organisational office-bearers the party announced on Thursday, ending days of intense speculation.
The two are among 19 vice-presidents appointed on Thursday, along with eight general secretaries and 19 secretaries, who would be steering the party’s poll prospects in the high-stakes UP Assembly elections early next year.The list has come almost six months after party MP and Union minister Pankaj Chaudhary took charge as UP BJP chief in Dec last year. In all, the team, comprising 48 members (including Chaudhary and state general secretary-organisation Dharampal Singh), is bigger than the previous one, which comprised 43 members, including 18 vice-presidents, seven general secretaries and 16 secretaries.Among the vice-presidents, the party has retained only four — Braj Bahadur, Mohit Beniwal, Dharmendra Singh and Devesh Kumar Kori. The prominent inclusion among the VPs, apart from Neeraj Singh and Pooja Pal, is former minister Suresh Rana, who lost his Thana Bhawan seat in the 2022 Assembly elections to RLD’s Ashraf Ali Khan.Neeraj has replaced his elder brother and party’s Noida MLA Pankaj Singh. He has been active in politics for the past 24 years and is known for his social welfare endeavors, especially in his father’s Lok Sabha constituency, Lucknow.
The appointment of Pooja Pal, on the other hand, has evoked curiosity as she is still a member of SP, as per Vidhan Sabha records.Among state general secretaries, only two — Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan and Sanjay Rai — have been retained, while Priyanka Singh Rawat has been shifted as state vice-president. The party has also promoted state secretary Abhijat Mishra as the state general secretary.Ankur Sharma from Bulandshahr, who is considered close to Union home minister Amit Shah, has made it to the list as one of the 16 secretaries.
An engineer by education, he has worked with the RSS before crossing over to the BJP fold.The BJP has tried to strike a caste balance while ensuring representation of different caste groups in the new team. A lion’s share has been given to the electorally important OBC community. Out of 46 newly appointed members, 20 are OBCs (eight vice-presidents, four state general secretaries and eight secretaries). Likewise, six office-bearers — two VPs, one general secretary and three secretaries — are from the SC community.This way, more than 58% of the state unit comprises leaders from the OBC and the SC community marking BJP’s sharp counter to SP’s Picchda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak (PDA) poll narrative, which is said to have dented the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, bringing its tally down from 62 to 33.Nevertheless, the party has managed to give perceptible representation to the upper-caste communities, BJP’s traditional vote bank since the rise of the Ram temple movement.
Out of the 46 new office-bearers, seven are Brahmins, six are Thakurs and seven are from Vaishya, Bhumihar and Kayastha communities. This way, the upper castes account for around 42% of the state team leaders in UP.The move gained significance months after BJP faced an intense backlash over the UGC regulations involving equity in higher education institutions regulation, meant to prevent caste-based discrimination on campus.
The upper-caste and the right-wing social groups had accused the BJP-led Centre of bowing to pressure and authorising institutional bias.The party effected a major organisational reshuffle in the six regions, where all regional presidents were replaced. Out of the six regional presidents, four are from the OBC community. They included Nawab Singh Nagar (West UP), Pooran Lal Lodhi (Braj region), Ram Kishore Sahu (Kanpur-Bundelkhand) and Ashok Chaurasia (Kashi).
Awadh region will be headed by Awdhesh Dwivedi, a Brahmin, while Gorakhpur region will be helmed by Vinod Rai, a Bhumihar.The party also changed all its frontal organisation leaders. While Rohit Mishra has replaced Pranshu Dutt Dwivedi as state chief of Bhartiya Janta Yuva Morcha, Prakash Pal will take charge of OBC morcha, replacing Narendra Kashyap. Likewise, Ram Chandra Kannaujia has made way for Ashok Rawat as SC Morcha president.In the case of the ST frontal wing, the party has appointed Vidya Bhushan Gond, who will replace Sanjay Gond. Similarly, Saroj Kushwaha has been appointed as Mahila Morcha president, replacing Geeta Shakya, who has been promoted as state general secretary. So is the case with Kisan Morcha, which will now be headed by Devendra Singh, replacing Kameshwar Singh, who is now a vice-president.The party did not announce any change in the case of minority morcha, which is currently headed by Basit Ali. Similarly, the party retained Manish Dixit as its media and publicity in-charge, a post he has retained for almost a decade.
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