Maha holds sway in BJP organizational rejig

Mumbai: Four political leaders from Maharashtra feature in the BJP’s fresh list of prabharis (in-charge) and saha-prabharis (co-incharge) for 15 states going to polls in the next 18-24 months leading to the Lok Sabha 2024 in a major organizational reshuffle by party president JP Nadda last week. BJP leader from Mumbai, Vinod Tawde and former Union minister Prakash Javadekar have been put in charge of the important states of Bihar and Kerala, respectively, while former minister Pankaja Munde and exchairperson of the Maharashtra State Women’s Commission Vijaya Rahatkar have been named co-incharges of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Groomed by party veterans Pramod Mahajan and Gopinath Munde as a student leader, Tawde was denied a ticket in the 2019 assembly elections. In September 2020, he was rehabilitated by the party and put incharge of Haryana. Asked to aid Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, convenor of the BJP Presidential election management committee, Tawde travelled with then-presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu on her campaign ahead of the elections.

Tawde’s appointment is clearly a promotion for the 59-year-old who replaces Bhupender Yadav, in the wake of the party’s massive setback last month, when Bihar CM Nitish Kumar dropped out of the NDA to form a government with the Rashtriya Janata Dal. The BJP had done well to emerge with 74 seats—just behind the RJD’s 75—in the 2020 Bihar assembly elections. However, Tawde’s challenge will be to prepare the party organization for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the 2025 assembly polls. Bihar has 40 LS seats, and BJP has won 17 compared to JDU’s 16 in the 2019 polls. Javadekar (71), who was dropped from the Union cabinet—where he held I&B and the Environment, Forests and Climate Change portfolios—in July 2021, has the massive challenge of growing the party in the one remaining Left bastion of Kerala. While the BJP has made inroads into West Bengal since 2014, it failed to send even one MLA to the 140-member Kerala assembly dominated by the CPI (M). Alongside Tawde, the party rehabilitated Pankaja Munde in 2020 after her 2019 loss to cousin Dhananjay Munde from her father’s bastion of Parli. Minister for Women and Child Welfare in Devendra Fadnavis cabinet, Pankaja was made saha-prabhari in Madhya Pradesh to help Prabhari P Murlidhar Rao as the BJP seized power in March 2020. BJP has added its MP Ram Shankar Katheria as the third coin-charge in MP in the current rejig. Known for her quiet and low-profile style of working, Dr Vijaya Rahatkar, who served as National President of BJP Mahila Morcha in 2014, was the chairperson of Maharashtra State Women’s Commission in the BJP’s previous term.