More than a year after taking over as Bharatiya Janata Party President Rajnath Singh Monday constituted his team, dropping Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi from the party's Parliamentary Board and Arun Jaitley as spokesman while appointing Yashwant Sinha as vice-president.
Wielding the axe, Singh also dropped Sanjay Joshi as general secretary (organisation) in a sign that all is not well with the RSS-appointee in the party organisation ever since controversy surrounded him over sleaze CDs during a party conclave in December 2005.
Gopinath Munde, a prominent OBC leader from Maharashtra and brother-in-law of late Pramod Mahajan, was inducted as general secretary. He had earlier been vice-president.
Sinha, who was marginalised after his criticism of L K Advani following his Jinnah comments and removed as spokesman, was rehabilitated with his surprise appointment as vice-president.
The BJP president has brought in former chief minister Shanta Kumar, Jual Oram and Karuna Shukla as three of the nine vice presidents of the party. The other vice presidents included Kalyan Singh, Balasaheb Apte, Sahib Singh Verma,Yashwant Sinha, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Kailash Mehgwal.
While Arun Jaitley continues to be the party's general secretary, he has been relieved of his responsibility as the media spokesperson and has been made secretary of the parliamentary board. He would look after the tasks which were earlier looked after by Mahajan.
Besides Jaitley, the other party general secretaries include Anant Kumar, Gopinath Munde, Vinay Katiyar, Thawarchand Gehlot and Om Prakash Mathur. Ram Lal will be the general secretary incharge of the organization in place of Sanjay Joshi.
However, not a single woman has been named as general secretary.
The new appointments have ended the suspence over the new team which barring a few changes here and there has nothing new to offer except removal of Sanjay Joshi.
With PTI inputs
