Nitish Kumar, leader of the JD(U), has announced a refreshed list of national office bearers, signalling a strategic shift within the party as it navigates the political landscape post his resignation as Chief Minister.
Key Points
- Nitish Kumar approves a new list of national office bearers.
- Sanjay Kumar Jha retains his position as JD-U national working president.
- Chandreshwar Prasad Chandravanshi appointed as the new JD-U vice president.
- Former IAS officer Manish Kumar Verma named as a general secretary.
- Nitish Kumar recently resigned as Bihar CM after being elected to Parliament.
Janata Dal-United chief and former Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday approved a fresh list of national office bearers of the party, including a vice president and 11 general secretaries.
Conspicuous by his absence from the list was Kumar's son Nishant, who joined the party last month and whom cadres had wanted to play a key organisational role after he refused to join the Samrat Choudhary government.
While Sanjay Kumar Jha, a close aide of the JD-U supremo and a fellow Rajya Sabha MP, retained the post of national working president, extremely backward class (EBC) leader Chandreshwar Prasad Chandravanshi has been made the vice president.
Alok Kumar Suman, a second-term MP from the reserved Gopalganj seat, will continue as the treasurer.
Prominent among general secretaries are Manish Kumar Verma, a former IAS officer who took voluntary retirement in 2021 and joined the party three years later.
Other notable general secretaries include former minister Ashok Choudhary, widely perceived as a key member of the JD-U supremo's proverbial inner circle, and Afaq Ahmed Khan, a grassroots-level organisation man, who is also a member of the state legislative council.
Besides, eight leaders have been made national secretaries of the party.
Prominent among them are national spokesman Rajiv Ranjan Prasad and Ruhi Tagung, who has for years been the JD-U's flag bearer in Arunachal Pradesh.
Notably, the JD-U president ended his two-decade-long tenure as CM last week when he resigned following his election to Parliament.
Earlier this week, he chaired a meeting of party legislators in an apparent bid to assure them that his stepping down did not mean a loss of political clout for the JD-U.
