The BJP’s new central team under president Nitin Nabin signals a broader organisational change combining familiar faces, inducting leaders who had joined from rival parties, and a major overhaul of its social media machinery, and secretaries.
The return of Smriti Irani as the national general secretary is among the most notable changes, as is the return of the Sangh’s articulate face Ram Madhav as the national vice president.
After losing Amethi in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, Irani had receded from the party’s national roster. Her return puts a recognisable and combative leader back in a key organisational role, giving the BJP a familiar face for both electoral campaigns and television debates.
Piyush Goyal’s appointment as national treasurer is another key change. He held the post for many years, even when he shifted as union minister in the government. He is likely to hold both posts within the party and government.
These changes hint that the BJP now has its eyes firmly set on 2029 Lok Sabha polls as some key old-timers have been brought in to lend heft to the party.
The new team also includes several leaders who began their political careers outside the BJP.
Sandeep Pathak, associated with the Aam Aadmi Party’s organisational machinery, and former Congress spokesperson Rohan Gupta have been appointed national secretaries. Manpreet Singh Badal, a former Congress leader and Punjab finance minister, has been made a national vice president. Their inclusion reflects the BJP’s continuing effort to absorb leaders from rival parties while adding new faces to its organisation. Both Pathak and Badal have their eyes set on Punjab, which goes to polls early next year.
The biggest change, however, is in the party’s digital operations. The entire social media team has been replaced, with Deepak Mhaskey appointed convenor and Priti Gandhi, Shivanand Dwivedi, Alok Bhatt, and Arun Yadav as co-convenors. Several of the new appointees are already active in pro-BJP online spaces, suggesting that the party wants its digital team to be made up of people familiar with the political battles taking place on social media.
The most significant omission is Amit Malviya, who had headed the BJP’s IT cell for nearly a decade and played a central role in its digital campaigns. His name does not appear in the new list. The party has not explained his absence, making it one of the most closely watched changes in the reshuffle.
Taken together, the changes suggest that the BJP is trying to adjust its organisation to a political environment in which social media is increasingly important, particularly amongst younger voters.
The vice presidents
The list has grown from 11 to 13, but only four names carry over—former Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje, Baijayant Jay Panda, Rekha Verma, and Tariq Mansoor.
Gone are Saroj Pandey, D.K. Aruna, M. Chuba Ao, Abdulla Kutty, Laxmikant Bajpai and Lata Usendi—between them, representation from Nagaland, Kerala and Chhattisgarh at this level disappears.
In their place: former Uttarkhand CM Tirath Singh Rawat, Ram Madhav, D. Purandeshwari (swapping in for Aruna as the Andhra face), Varshaben Doshi, former MoS Bharti Pravin Pawar, Manpreet Singh Badal and Karnataka's M. Nagaraja. Lal Singh Arya (previously the SC Morcha president), gets promoted into this tier.
Ram Madhav's return to a national post is the most-watched inclusion here, given his past role as the party's key interlocutor in the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir.
General secretaries
Of the six general secretaries under the old setup, only Vinod Tawde and Sunil Bansal survive. Dushyant Kumar Gautam and Radha Mohan Das Agarwal drop out altogether, and Tarun Chugh shifts sideways to head the Central Office.
Stepping in: former Tripura CM Biplab Kumar Deb, Satish Poonia, Gajendra Patel, Harish Dwivedi, Sanjay Bhatia, and Smriti Irani.
Secretaries
This is where the churn is starkest. Of 13 national secretaries in the old list, only Anil Antony survives into the new 16-member team.
Arvind Menon, Pankaja Munde, Narendra Singh, Alka Gujar, Omprakash Dhurve, Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, Surendra Singh Nagar, Manjinder Singh Sirsa and Om Prakash Dhankar are all out. Rituraj Sinha, formerly a secretary, resurfaces in the new list as joint coordinator for 'All Cells'.
The fresh intake—Kavita Patidar, K. Surendran, Sandeep Pathak, Phangnon Konyak, Mriganka Deo Barman, Rohan Gupta—is an attempt at broadening of geography, bringing in the Northeast, Kerala and Assam more visibly than before.
Morchas
All seven wings—Yuva, Mahila, OBC, Kisan, SC, ST and Minority—get new presidents.
Tejasvi Surya exits Yuva Morcha for Hemang Joshi; Vanathi Srinivasan makes way for Roop Kumari Choudhary at Mahila Morcha; K. Laxman's departure from the OBC Morcha (he also served as the party's returning officer) hands the post to Amarpal Maurya; Rajkumar Chahar gives way to Bansilal Gurjar at Kisan Morcha; Samir Oraon is replaced by Mannalal Rawat at ST Morcha; and Jamal Siddiqui's exit from Minority Morcha—a post he held through several election cycles—goes to Kunwar Basit Ali. It is a complete reset of the party's demographic outreach arms.
Media and IT
Rajya Sabha MP Anil Baluni continues, even as his old deputy Sanjay Mayukh is out, replaced by a three-member co-convenor team. The new additions are Ashish Agarwal, Pradip Bhandari and Siddharth Yadav.
The changes have been made with an eye on future polls as the Opposition is trying to seize the opportunity that has emerged with the students' protest.
While the return of established leaders such as Irani, the elevation of Goyal, and the induction of leaders from rival parties strengthen the party’s conventional political machinery, the overhaul of the digital team points to a parallel effort to adapt to younger audiences who consume political content through short videos, memes and highly personalised online messaging.
In all, this reflects an attempt to combine established political faces with a younger and more digitally oriented organisation, as political parties compete for influence on platforms where Gen Z and Gen Alpha increasingly encounter politics.
