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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, NOV 2: Virtually idle for the past two months, the BJP’s national office-bearers can now look forward to getting some jobs. Party chief Bangaru Laxman is likely to allocate work to them within the next two days, party sources said.
Bangaru had a closed-door meeting with Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee and Home Minister L.K. Advani yesterday to finalise work allocation among his colleagues. He is expected to announce it by Saturday. BJP office-bearers will have a formal meeting on Monday after the work allocation, sources said.
The party’s senior-most general secretary, Narendra Modi, who was sent as an observer to Lucknow during Rajnath Singh’s swearing-in as Chief Minister last week, is likely to get charge of Uttar Pradesh.
The state that has witnessed a lot of political upheaval, including three chief ministers in the past two years, was so far being looked after by K.N. Govindacharya, who was sacked from the list of BJP office-bearers this time reportedly at Vajpayee’s behest.
The BJP top brass is learnt to be in favour of letting former BJP president Kushabhau Thakre to coordinate with the RSS, while the job of liasioning with the Government would be handled by Bangaru himself with party secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi assisting him in the job.
None of the BJP general secretaries, with the sole exception of Modi, has any experience of handling organisational work. Three other general secretaries, Sahib Singh Varma, Maya Singh and Sunil Shastri, have been included in the team of national office-bearers for the first time. The fifth general secretary, M. Venkaiah Naidu, has resigned to take up an assignment in the Vajpayee Cabinet.
Among the other issues which Bangaru reportedly discussed with Vajpayee and Advani was finding another general secretary to fill Naidu’s place, selecting chief ministers for the new states of Uttaranchal and Jharkhand states and a possible Cabinet expansion.
There is also vacancy in the Cabinet due to Rajnath Singh’s resignation to take up chief ministership of Uttar Pradesh and another is likely to be created shortly once Babulal Marandi is appointed the first chief minister of Jharkhand. The Prime Minister is learnt to be considering including Uma Bharti in the Cabinet reshuffle likely to be effected before the start of the winter session of Parliament starting on November 20.
Most of the office-bearers retained from Kushabhau Thakre’s team are likely to keep the assignments being handled by them. BJP vice-president Pyare Lal Khandelwal would, therefore, continue to be in-charge of Orissa and Assam while another vice-president, Sanghapriya Gautam, would continue as in-charge of Maharashtra and Goa, party sources said.
Senior vice-president Kailash Pati Mishra would be handling party affairs in West Bengal and Bihar while Jana Krishnamurthy would be in-charge of the party headquarters here, besides looking after the BJP’s growth in the south Indian states.
Another vice-president, Madan Lal Khurana, would be getting charge of Punjab and Haryana, while general secretary Maya Singh is expected to take charge of Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. Sahib Singh would look after party affairs in Rajasthan, sources said.
