More than half of BJP's 50-year-old president Amit Shah's team is likely to be younger than him. Shah, the youngest chief the BJP has had, is giving final touches to the team of party office-bearers. Sources said more than 50% will be under 50. However, it would not be dominated by new faces.
While nearly half a dozen office-bearers in former party president Rajnath Singh's team are now in the Modi government, some more office-bearers are likely to be dropped as they could be inducted into the council of ministers. There is speculation that JP Nadda, general secretary and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, vice-president will be inducted into the cabinet.
Shah would have the task of filling not only the existing vacancies but also those caused by the dropping of office-bearers who could get berth in the government. A party source said the exercise will be "more than filling up the blanks" but several existing names are expected to be retained.
With assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand due later this year, this would be the first test for the new team. The party's Maharashtra unit is likely to get representation with the inclusion of either Devendra Fadnavis or Vinod Tawde, sources said.
The party also wanted to give representation to states where the BJP did not have a strong presence, they said.
Ram Madhav, the recent entrant into the party from the RSS, is also expected to be given a crucial role. There is speculation that existing office bearers like Ram Lal, Varun Gandhi, Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Muralidhar Rao and Bhupendra Yadav would be retained in the new team.
Apart from ten office bearers including general secretaries, vice-presidents and treasurer of the party, two spokespersons — Prakash Javadekar and Nirmala Sitharaman — have also moved to the government.
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