BJP chief Rajnath Singh on Sunday brought in former Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah, a trusted aide of Narendra Modi, as incharge of party affairs in Uttar Pradesh.
Known for his organisational skills, Shah's task to revive party's fortune in the State that sends maximum 80 MPs to lok Sabha also signals Modi's growing involvement in the preparation for the next general election.
In allocating responsibilities to new prabharis, Singh did not touch election-bound States like Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan and stopped short of taking a call on Delhi. While prabharis in other States were changed, Singh also announced a Programme Implementation and Coordination Committee under vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.
Rajiv Pratap Rudy (Maharashtra), Ananth Kumar (Madhya Pradesh), JP Nadda (Chhattisgarh), Chandan Mitra (Odisha), SS Ahluwalia (Assam), Dharmendra Pradhan (Bihar), Varun Gandhi (West Bengal), Kaptan Singh Solanki (Rajasthan) Ramapati Ram Tripathi (Jharkhand), Thawarchand Gehlot (Karnataka), Prabhat Jha (Andhra Pradesh), Balbir Punj (Himachal Pradesh), Smriti Irani (Goa) and Murlidhar Rao (Tamil Nadu) are other prominent leaders who have figured in the list of prabharis.
Bandaru Dattatray, a veteran from Andhra Pradesh, has been appointed vice president of the party and given charge of Kerala. Among the young faces, Nalin Kohli has been given the charge of Mizoram where his father Amolak Rattan Kohli had once served as the Governor.
Trivendra Rawat, Rameshwar Chaurasia and Satyendra Kushwaha (Uttar Pradesh), Shyam Jaju (Punjab), Anil Jain (Haryana), Vindo Pandey (Bihar), Arun Singh (Odisha), RP Singh (J&K) and Sidharthnath Singh (West Bengal) have also been appointed as sah-prabhari.
M Venkaiah Naidu, Harshvardhan, Kiran Maheshwari, Karun Shukla, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Purushottam Rupala, Santosh Gangwar are prominent among those who could not make it to the list. All of them had charge of some State as prabhari or co in-charge.
Outgoing media convener of the party, Shrikant Sharma, has been retained.