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Monday, Jun 07, 2004

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National

New list of office-bearers

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI, JUNE 6. The Bharatiya Janata Party president, M. Venkaiah Naidu, has a new team of office-bearers, mostly old faces. Perhaps, the most important change is the elevation of Shivraj Singh Chauhan, who, in addition to retaining his position as party general secretary, will also be secretary to the two most powerful party committees — the parliamentary board and the central election committee. He replaces Pramod Mahajan, who continues to be one of the five party general secretaries.

Mr. Naidu has, for the first time, created the post of secretary to the party president, and the former officer on special duty in the Prime Minister's Office, Sudheendra Kulkarni, is the man chosen for this job.

Mr. Mahajan has been given overall charge of Maharashtra and continues to be member of both the parliamentary board and the central election committee. The official line is that he will be busy in that State in view of the Assembly elections there a few months from now. Prakash Javadekar, who was additional party spokesperson, has been asked to focus his attention on the Maharashtra elections.

The former Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, released the list of members of the new committees. He said Mr. Naidu had tried to keep in mind adequate representation to the minorities, women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and backward castes. The new national executive committee has 13 women, including 2 office-bearers, 4 Muslims, 2 Christians and 3 Sikhs, 11 members of Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes, including 5 office-bearers, and 18 backward caste members. After being elected party president earlier this year, Mr. Naidu had put off changes in his team in view of the impending elections.

The five new general secretaries are Mr. Mahajan, Rajnath Singh, Mr. Jaitley, Mr. Chauhan and Sanjay Joshi. Mr. Joshi, who will continue to be in-charge of the party organisation, has also been given status of special invitee to the nine-member parliamentary board.

While Anita Arya, general secretary in the outgoing team, has been dropped altogether, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, also outgoing general secretary, has been made vice-president, along with six others — the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Kalyan Singh, Balwant Apte (Maharashtra), Babulal Marandi (former Jharkhand Chief Minister), Sushil Modi (MP and former leader of Bihar legislature party), Thawarchand Gehlot (Madhya Pradesh) and Jaskaur Meena (Rajasthan). Ms. Meena is one of two women in the new office-bearers' team; the other is Kiran Maheshwari, also from Rajasthan. For the first time in over a decade the BJP will not have a woman general secretary.

The new party treasurer will be Sukumar Nambiar (Tamil Nadu) who replaces Ramdas Aggarwal (Rajasthan). The new seven national secretaries are L. Ganesan (Tamil Nadu), Shahnawaz Hussain (former Civil Aviation Minister from Bihar), Kishan Singh Sangwan (Haryana), Bhai Girkar (Maharashtra), Sadanand Gowda (Karnataka), Tapir Gao (Arunachal Pradesh) and Ms. Maheshwari (Rajasthan).

The former External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, will be one of three party spokespersons, along with Mr. Jaitley and Mr. Naqvi, while the new MP from Barmer in Rajasthan, Manvendra Singh, son of the former Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh, will be an additional party spokesperson.

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