Nitin Nabin holds first meeting with BJP's newly appointed national team

BJP national president Nitin Nabin on Saturday held the first meeting with the party's newly appointed national office-bearers to discuss poll strategy and grassroots outreach, party sources said.

The meeting focused on preparations for upcoming state assembly elections, grassroots mobilisation and communicating government initiatives to the public, the sources said.

More meetings are scheduled later in the day, with state presidents, state in-charges and chief ministers of BJP-ruled states expected to attend, they said.

The BJP announced a new national team under Nabin earlier this week. It comprises 65 office-bearers, with 51 new faces.

The new team includes 13 national vice presidents, including former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia and former RSS functionary Ram Madhav, while former Union minister Smriti Irani has been appointed as one of the eight national general secretaries.

B L Santhosh has been retained as national general secretary (organisation) and Vinod Tawde and Sunil Bansal as general secretaries.

The new team includes 12 women and six leaders from minority communities.

Union minister Piyush Goyal has been named national treasurer, a post he held before becoming a minister in the first Narendra Modi government in May 2014.

The BJP removed Amit Malviya as the head of its IT department and appointed Deepak Mhaskey of Chhattisgarh in his place. Hemang Joshi of Gujarat has been named the party's Yuva Morcha president, replacing Lok Sabha MP Tejasvi Surya.

The reshuffle, which came more than a decade after the last organisational rejig of this scale in 2015 under then party president Amit Shah, has also fuelled speculation about an imminent Cabinet reshuffle.

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