“We were expecting a big splash. A sonic boom,” said a BJP leader after party President Nitin Nabin on Monday announced the list of BJP office bearers who, from now on, can be called Nabin's playing XI or BJP's Team For 2029.
A quick read of the list will present a simplistic inference that team members brought in by J P Nadda as president in August 2022 have either been rewarded, retained or replaced by someone. Let's first deal with who is in and who is out.
Who Replaces Whom?
In the team Nitin Nabin inherited from J P Nadda, there were 11 vice presidents.
Only 4 have been retained.
In place of the 7 dropped vice presidents, 9 new faces have been inducted.
The standout inclusion is RSS man Ram Madhav.
The general secretaries are the cutting edge of BJP's working and electoral machinery. The outgoing team had 6 general secretaries and one National General Secretary (Organisation), RSS man B L Santosh. Santosh stays as the RSS man in BJP's structure as national general secretary. This signals continuity.
Only two general secretaries, Sunil Bansal and Vinod Tawde, have been retained.
Four others have been replaced while two have been inducted to fill vacancies.
Ex-Minister Smriti Irani, ex-Tripura chief minister Biplab Deb, Harish Dwevidi, ex-MP from Basti in UP, ex-Rajasthan BJP president Satish Poonia, Gajendra Patel and Sanjay Bhatia are in.
All but one National Secretary have been replaced.
There has been a complete overhaul in the various mass organisations. The high-profile Yuva Morcha chief Tejasvi Surya has been replaced by 35-year-old Vadodara MP Hemang Joshi.
The Mahila, OBC, Kisan, SC, ST and Minority Morcha chiefs have been replaced.
There have been two other key ousters and inclusions.
Social Media Cell will be headed by Deepak Mahaske, who replaces Amit Malviya. The party Treasurer's post is now with Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal.
The list does lack a big wow factor. Nothing really leaps out like a scintilla, capable of starting a major buzz.
But with this list, Narendra Modi-led BJP has rested its penchant for a spectacle - the big splash. Barring a brief time in 2015, when the BJP lost Delhi and Bihar assembly polls, the party president's team was picked with the mindset of a conqueror.
This time, the team has been picked with an eye on the challenges faced for consolidation and correction. It's a walk back to the basics.
Sources say the base list of probables was very long. Compiled from multiple inputs, including the RSS, it went through multiple filters. Amit Shah, Nitin Nabin, B L Santosh and J P Nadda formed the key screening committee. The BJP had detailed reports on each leader's performance, especially from election duty in Bihar, West Bengal and other states. Then there were inputs and pushes from the RSS.
The core filter of the classic organisational rejig is trust.
Next, the list doesn't have the distinct stamp of one person.
For example, the new vice president Ram Madhav is back from six years of “vanvas” after six years as party general secretary. His profile had peaked after his effort led to the formation of a PDP-BJP government in J&K. He has returned to the party as the RSS wanted him back.
Smriti Irani is back after 2024, her loss in the Amethi seat to Rahul Gandhi. She didn't get a Rajya Sabha berth. She campaigned hard in West Bengal as an ordinary worker. She is not a mass leader in the classic sense, but is an influential leader who can speak many Indian languages and can be both aggressive and capable of connecting.
She had defeated Rahul Gandhi in the Gandhi-Nehru family pocket borough in 2019. In 2024, she lost, but the BJP too had lost ground. She enters the organisational structure despite her not-so-cordial relations with Home Minister Amit Shah, as the BJP has no better candidate to challenge Rahul Gandhi, who will be Congress' prime ministerial face in 2029. Her portfolio needed some heft.
Deepak Mhaske, the new social media unit head in place of Amit Malviya, is said to be the choice of the new president Nitin Nabin.
He, as the BJP's Chhattisgarh IT head, had crafted a muscular campaign pitch with animations and videos in 2023. He had provided Facebook accounts for each of the 90 Assembly segments for campaign posts.
Vinod Tawde and Sunil Bansal have been retained as general secretaries. They have the backing of the Modi-Shah duo and the RSS. Bansal had delivered UP in 2017, Odisha in 2024 and West Bengal in 2026. Tawde, after being retained, has been handed over the charge of 2027 UP polls. He is credited with the BJP's fantastic showing in the Bihar assembly polls in 2025.
BJP's ex-Rajasthan unit head Satish Poonia was backed by PM Modi. He lost his assembly seat but was brought to Rajya Sabha. He proved his organisational skills when he was given charge of 40 seats in last Gujarat assembly polls. In 2024 Haryana assembly polls, he was in charge and delivered a win. In 2024 Lok Sabha polls, BJP suffered setbacks in Rajasthan's Jat-dominated areas. His Jat leader image will send a signal to the community unhappy over the resignation of Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar, a Jat.
Ex-Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhra Raje stays vice president despite constant friction with the BJP's current top leadership. By retaining her, she is neither being antagonised nor being allowed to actively interfere in Rajasthan politics.
Rajya Sabha MP Tarun Chugh is the new National Office in-charge. On Tuesday, he was made party's Gujarat in-charge. This ends the ten-year tenure of Amit Shah's favourite Union Minister Bhupender Yadav as the Gujarat in-charge.
Jagdish Patel was appointed national secretary from Gujarat. He has now been made co-in-charge for Uttar Pradesh. Patel is known to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He is said to have played a key role in his victory in Varanasi in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls as a backroom organiser.
Sandeep Pathak, who jumped from AAP to the BJP, is another significant addition to the list. Sources say recently he was rushed to Bankipur, the seat vacated by Nitin Nabin, for a quick assessment for the bypoll. Pathak returned with a prediction that the BJP was set to lose the bastion to Prashant Kishore and the margin was likely to be around 15,000 votes. Pathak was the backroom planner and data man for AAP in Punjab in 2022. He is set to become the BJP's potent weapon in Punjab in 2027. For AAP, he had also mapped Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
Similarly, Tejasvi Surya was heading the Party's Yuva Morcha. The BJYM faltered in gauging the pulse of the youth anger over exam leaks, which boiled over into a credible agitation. Surya is out despite the backing of the powerful general secretary organisation.
What's The Signal - And For Whom?
The change and the signals are rooted in the challenges the BJP faces right in the middle of Modi's third term as PM.
First, a fatigue has set in after two wins and 12 years in power.
Despite big-ticket pro-poor and infra schemes, the economic atmosphere hasn't ushered in wholesome growth. Aspirations have grown, but available jobs haven't kept pace. The party controls the education matrix largely, but quality of education or integrity of exams are questionable. In 2014 and 2019, the young voters were the BJP's big catch. Lack of jobs, poor career prospects and failing systems have hurt this segment.
The BJP has emerged as an all-conquering electoral machinery by recalibrating its mass base. But its core strength, the upper-caste vote bank, is getting increasingly disillusioned.
The Hindutva card didn't work in 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Even in the past, the agitation for a Ram temple had helped the BJP, but it ran out of steam after a few years.
The BJP leadership, it seems, has realised the need to go back to the basics. To listen to what the ground is whispering.
That's why there are no Big Bang signals in the list. Only subtle ones aimed at the areas of strength and weakness.
The exam paper leaks and the students' uprising have brought the focus sharply on the young voters. The new team has a large number of leaders below 40 and under 50 years of age. The young don't fall for such signalling, but young leaders can provide better feedback and understanding to the party about their aspirations and challenges. The changes also signal that the party is flexible, ready to make amends if there is dissent against its present style of working. The BJP will now attempt a drive that keeps the youth away from narratives against it.
The BJP has fared well in securing the support of the women voter constituency through policies and schemes. BJP wants to retain this advantage as women are preferring to vote for those who benefit them than on emotive appeals of caste and community. That's why the list of 13 vice presidents has 6 women. The outgoing team had no women general secretary. The new list has 12 women leaders representing a strategic blend of administrative and organisational experience, youth, social inclusiveness and geographic diversity.
Nearly 40% members of the team of office bearers come from marginalised sections of society. This is in line with the BJP's recent success in expanding its demographic support base from low in number upper castes to the high in strength OBCs, MBCs and Dalits. Unlike the upper castes, these segments are “neo-converts”. Their support to the BJP is not cast in stone, as witnessed in UP in 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Next are the challenges the BJP faces in UP. 8 leaders from UP have found a place in the list. 2 general secretaries are from UP. They will improve the feedback from the ground and BJP's connect with the voter in UP to counter the threat posed by SP's Akhilesh Yadav and his PDA social engineering, which succeeded in 2024.
Will This Shuffle Work?
Sources in the BJP say that the rejig announced on Monday is part of a larger exercise. After giving a team of office bearers, the party top brass and the RSS will work for reshaping the top decision-making body - the parliamentary board - and finally, perhaps, Modi's Council of Ministers.
A senior Congress leader called the exercise “nothing more than a clever stratagem of statistics”. He said, “Compared to the big names and stalwarts in the Congress CWC, the BJP's new team of office bearers is an army of political insignificants.”
But that's not an apt comparison. The Congress' CWC has both, leaders who take the decisions and leaders who execute the decisions.
BJP is built differently. The parliamentary board, with BJP's who's who as members, takes the decisions. The office bearers provide the inputs from the ground, execute the decisions and manage the show.
That's why the team of office bearers has been built with leaders who are trusted and are expected to bring better feedback for the top leadership, create connect on the ground and make the plans work.
They aren't poll winners. The face will remain Narendra Modi. The poll-friendly push, policies and polarisation will come from the central and state governments and leaders. The RSS will work on the ground. The new office bearers will be the command centres operating on the ground. With this, the BJP seems to be aligning with the philosophy of the RSS, in which leaders don't need to be big faces. They need to work to build the organisation.
(The author is Consulting Editor, NDTV)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
