Major organisational reshuffle in BJP in Bihar, focus on LS, assembly polls

NEW DELHI: Focusing on upcoming Lok Sabha polls and the 2025 Bihar assembly polls, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday made a major organisational change in the state.

Out of the 45 organisational districts in Bihar, the party has changed the presidents of 27 districts. The reshuffling has been made focusing on winnability and caste combinations in mind.

"Out of 27 changes that have been made, the party's biggest focus has been on accommodating Economically Backward Classes (EBCs). Twelve EBC presidents have been appointed in place of eight earlier. Last time, the party had implemented the appointment of two leaders from the Kushwaha faction which now stands at five," a BJP source told ANI.

Notably, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is the biggest Other Backward Class (OBC) leader in the state and BJP has no state leaders to challenge his persona at this time. Considering this, the party is banking on Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the voice of the OBCs and EBCs.

"In the run-up to the elections lot of permutations and combinations will change. Leaders like Chirag Paswan, Jiten Ram Manjhi and Upendra Kushwaha who are very strong leaders are very keen to join the BJP's fold. Therefore the vote bank of BJP will only be strengthened," a BJP national office bearer told ANI.

The party has set a target to win 40 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. BJP top brass including Union Home Minister Amit Shah has made multiple visits to the state since the fall of the BJP-Janata Dal-United government.

"The stern decision had been taken to implement these major changes despite a lot of pressure from the state leaders. The decision implemented by state chief Sanjay Jaiswal had very strong backing from incharge Vinod Tawde," said a party source.

Vinod Tawde will be on a 2-day visit to Bihar starting Saturday. Here, he will hold meetings with the party leadership and core team in the Bhagalpur district.

"Unlike many leaders, Tawde's approach has been to focus on the ground situation. Instead of calling regional leaders to the state capital of Patna, Tawde has travelled to these regional centres himself," a BJP state office bearer said.

After his visit to the eastern state this weekend, Tawde would have completed his visit to all the districts in the state, which is a key eastern state for the saffron party's fortunes. On September 9 last year, BJP president JP Nadda announced Vinod Tawde as the state in charge.

Tawde took over the reins from Bhupendra Yadav who is now a Union Minister in the Modi government. In 2020, the BJP and JDU fought the state assembly election in an alliance and went on to form the government with Nitish Kumar being the Chief Minister, despite BJP being the single largest party.

In less than two years' time, Nitish Kumar flipped his choices and in a surprise move went on to stitch an alliance with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Congress to form a government where Nitish continued to remain the CM.