BJP appoints state in-charges, retains most office-bearers

Its national general secretaries Vinod Tawde, Tarun Chugh and Radha Mohan Das Agarwal will continue to steer the party's organisational affairs in Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir and Karnataka respectively.

New Delhi: The BJP has announced in-charges for 24 states including Satish Poonia, Tarun Chugh and Laxmikant Bajpai on Friday. The appointments were made by BJP President JP Nadda.

In Haryana, the former Rajasthan unit president Poonia will be assisted by Surendra Singh Nagar, while Chugh’s co-incharge in Jammu and Kashmir will be Ashish Sood. Laxmikant Bajai is in-charge of Jharkhand.

For the poll-bound states, election in-charges have been announced a while ago – union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma for Jharkhand and union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan and former Tripura CM Biplab Deb for Haryana.

The party has retained Vinod Tawde as in-charge of Bihar, as well as co-incharge MP Deepak Prakash.

In Chhattisgarh, the party has appointed Nitin Nabin, Ashish Sood in Goa, while former UP minister Shrikant Sharma will be in-charge of Himachal Pradesh and Sanjay Tandon will be the co-incharge.

The party has given its Christian face Anil Antony the charge of two Northeastern states – Meghalaya and Nagaland – where it lost all seats in the Lok Sabha elections. Former Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani will be in-charge of Punjab and Narinder Singh will be his deputy. Dushyant Gautam is in-charge of Uttarakhand while Rekha Verma will be his deputy.

The party has removed Sambhit Patra as Manipur in-charge but he will be coordinator for all Northeastern states, while V Muraleedharan will be his deputy. In Kerala, where the BJP managed to win its first Lok Sabha seat this time, senior leader Prakash Javadekar will remain the in-charge and MP Aparajita Sarangi will be his deputy.

The names of the in-charges comes even as the party is readying for internal polls to elect a new party president. Party leaders said that a membership drive and mandal-level elections will start by later this month.