Nadda’s Term as BJP President Likely to be Extended

With an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP leadership has started a major organisational rejig across states. To begin with, the party has appointed new state chiefs for Punjab, Telangana, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh.

The party on Tuesday named Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy as Telangana chief, Sunil Jakhar (Punjab), former Union Minister D. Purandeswari (Andhra Pradesh) and Babulal Marandi as the Jharkhand BJP President.

In the coming days, according to party sources, BJP President J.P. Nadda will be appointing the new state chiefs in more than half a dozen states including Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir. However, it is being said that no big face is ready to take the charge of Madhya Pradesh, where Assembly polls are scheduled to be held by the end of this year.

Sources say that with very less time left for the Assembly elections and the party’s debacle in Karnataka are the major reasons why leaders are hesitant to go to Madhya Pradesh.

The BJP, which lost to the Congress in the last Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh in 2018, is leaving no stone unturned in its preparations this time. That’s why last year, in March, the party made a major change in the its state organisation, sending the then State General Secretary (Organisation) Suhas Bhagat back to the RSS and appointing Hitanand Sharma in his place.

The BJP high command wanted to bring major changes in Madhya Pradesh but the Karnataka results forced it to halt any fresh step.

The term of Madhya Pradesh BJP chief Vishnu Dutt Sharma has come to an end and the party wants to appoint a new state president, but sources claim that no big leader from Delhi is ready to go to Bhopal at this moment.

Though expressing reluctance, everyone has put the ball in Nadda’s court saying that they will accept whatever the party will order. In such a situation, the search for a new state president in Madhya Pradesh is still going on.

It is being said that if the party high command will not get any suitable candidate, then it may extend the tenure of Sharma till the Assembly elections. However, the party high command still wants that a big leader from Delhi should go to Bhopal and take charge of the state president.