New Delhi, July 23: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari Friday announced distribution of work to the party’s office-bearers, with general secretary Vasundhra Raje taking charge of Haryana and senior leader M. Venkiah Naidu of Delhi and Maharashtra.
The work distribution, done almost four months after Gadkari announced his new team, saw party leaders Najma Heptulla, Hema Malini and Varun Gandhi finding place in the list of 75 functionaries.
Both Heptulla and Hema Malini were not nominated to the Rajya Sabha last month.
Heptullah has been given charge of union territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli, while Hema Malini will look after the party’s cultural cell.
BJP MP Varun Gandhi has been made election incharge of Assam.
Major General (retd) B.C. Khanduri, who had to resign as Uttatrakhand chief minister in the wake of the BJP’s poor performance in the state in the last Lok Sabha elections, has been given charge of Tamil Nadu.
The charge of Uttar Pradesh has been given to Narendra Singh Tomar. General secretary Jagat Prakash Nadda will look after Chhattisgarh.
Party vice presidents Shanta Kumar and Kalraj Mishra will be in charge of Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh respectively.
BJP general secretary Ananth Kumar gets Madhya Pradesh and the poll-bound Bihar. Another general secretary, Thawar Chand Gehlot, is to look after Uttarakhand.
The others BJP office bearers are: Yashwant Sinha (Punjab), Chandan Mitra (West Bengal), Kaptan Singh Solanki (Rajasthan), Balbir Punj (Gujarat), O.P. Kohli (Jammu and Kashmir), Santosh Gangwar (Orissa), Harendra Pratap (Jharkhand), Murlidhar Rao (Kerala) and Vijay Goel (Assam).
Karuna Shukla is the new incharge of ‘Mahila Morcha’ (women’s wing) and J.K Jain of the minority wing.
While Ravi Shankar Prasad is incharge of the media department, Prakash Javedkar has been nominated to head the economic affairs cell.
Welcoming the list, Rajya Sabha member and Pioneer editor Chandan Mitra said the party president has asked the leaders in-charge of states to be in the field for at least 10 days in a month to induct more youth, Dalits and minorities into the party.
Asked about the resentment in some sections, Mitra said it was not possible to fully satisfy everybody all the time. He said Gadkari’s approach “was totally democratic”.
A senior party leader, who did not want to be named, said that many of the functionaries given responsibilities were not in the list of office-bearers announced March 16.
–Agecies