13 women in new BJP Team

Gadkari includes Najma Heptullah, Hema Malini in new team.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari today unveiled his new team and made much of the fact that the office-bearers included as many as 13 women, which was 33 per cent of the total number. However, of these 13, five were made vice presidents (Karuna Shukla, Najma Heptullah, Bijoya Chakravarti, Hema Malini and Kiran Ghai), a purely ornamental post in the party. In all, there were 40 women in the party’s national executive.

Gadkari’s team came almost two months after he had taken over as president of the party, and if it was to convey a message to the party, it was: Everyone must learn to get along with everyone.

If former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje was included in the list of general secretaries, her greatest detractor Col Bainsla was inducted as an occasional invitee to the national executive, one of the most important policy making bodies in the party. Raje was considered the bad girl of the BJP after she defied her party’s repeated directive to step down from the post of leader of Opposition in the Rajasthan Assembly, having lost the 2009 Assembly elections. Bainsla led huge rallies in the state for reservation to Gujjars and created a serious law and order problem for her in the state.

Gadkari proved that this principle – love thy enemy – applied as much to himself as to his followers in the party. One of his greatest detractors in the state, former leader Pramod Mahajan’s brother-in-law, Gopinath Munde, was included in the executive. Manavendra Singh, the son of expelled BJP leader Jaswant Singh and defeated BJP candidate from Barmer (Rajasthan) was also included on the executive.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi could not have been left out of the executive, but Shanta Kumar, the outspoken former chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, who openly criticised Modi after riots in Gujarat and had to quit the ministership in the Union government was appointed vice president.

Oddly, of all the general secretaries named — Raje, former Jharkhand chief minister Arjun Munda, Ananth Kumar (former Union minister and deeply opposed to chief minister B S Yeddyurappa leading a BJP government in Karnataka), Thavarchand Gehlot (Rajasthan), Vijay Goyal (Delhi), Ravi Shankar Prasad (chief spokesperson, Bihar), Dharmendra Pradhan (Orissa), Narendrasingh Tomar (Madhya Pradesh), Jagat Prakash Nadda (Himachal Pradesh), Ram Lal (organisation), V Satish and Saudan Singh (both joint general secretary, organisation) — there was not even one from Uttar Pradesh, considered the greatest political challenge for the party.

The national executive included a clutch of politicians from Gadkari’s home state, Maharashtra. There was a considerable representation from Bollywood, too: Actress Kiron Kher on the national executive, Smriti Irani made secretary and Hema Malini, vice president of the party.

As expected, younger leaders Varun Gandhi and Navjyot Singh Sidhu were made party secretaries. Shahnawaz Hussain and Tarun Vijay were made new spokespersons. The RSS touch was also evident: V Satheesh and Saudan Singh named organising secretaries, having been ‘lent’ by the RSS to the BJP to ensure the political organisation maintained ideological purity. The new 121-member national executive announced by Gadkari comprised 13 vice presidents, 10 general secretaries, 15 secretaries and a treasurer.