Ahead of the pivotal Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) named election in-charges and co-in-charges for 23 states and Union territories on Saturday. This includes Bihar, where the party hopes to regain power in coalition with the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United).
Baijayant Panda has been named by BJP president JP Nadda as the election coordinator for Uttar Pradesh, a state that can send up to 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha. As the state in charge of Delhi and Assam, Panda is also the national vice president of the party and a former legislator.
Known by most as “Jay” Panda, the senior politician left the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and joined the BJP for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Panda is expected to benefit from his assignment to supervise elections in Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP presently holds 62 MPs. Encouraged by the opening of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, the BJP hopes to gain further ground in the state against the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) as well as a coalition of the Congress and the Samajwadi Party.
The BJP said in a statement that Vinod Tawde, the national general secretary of the party, will be in charge of elections in Bihar, which is currently experiencing political turmoil due to Nitish Kumar’s apparent move to align with the BJP. Deepak Prakash, a member of the Rajya Sabha, will serve as the co-in-charge.
Tawde, who is also in charge of political affairs for the BJP in Bihar, is one of the leaders who has played a significant role in organising and carrying out party- and election-related initiatives. After the party won a landslide victory in the assembly elections in November of last year, he was recently dispatched as an observer to Rajasthan to select the next chief minister.
Prakash Javadekar, a former Union minister, has been appointed Kerala’s election commissioner. He also oversees political matters in the state. Vijay Rupani, a former chief minister of Gujarat, has been appointed by Nadda to oversee the elections in Punjab and Chandigarh. According to the BJP announcement, party national secretary Narinder Singh will support Rupani in Punjab.
Haryana will be led by former Tripura chief minister Biplab Deb, with Rajya Sabha member Surendra Singh Nagar serving as deputy chief minister. The Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) and the BJP share a coalition administration in the state, and the BJP has declared that it will fight for all 10 of the state’s seats alone.
With assistance from Sanjat Tandon, former minister of Uttar Pradesh Shrikant Sharma would be in charge of the Himachal Pradesh election preparations. Tarun Chugh, the national general secretary of the BJP, has been designated as the poll coordinator for the UTs of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Goa has been assigned to party leader Ashish Sood, who will also help Chugh with J&K poll preparations.
Laxmikant Bajpai, a member of the Rajya Sabha and national vice president of the BJP, will oversee Jharkhand’s election preparations, while Y Satya Kumar, the national secretary, will be in charge of Andaman and Nicobar’s. While Purnesh Modi and Dushyant Patel would be in charge of Daman and Diu, Assam minister Ashok Singhal would be in charge of Arunachal Pradesh. MP Sudhakar Reddy and national general secretary Radha Mohan Das Agarwal have been designated as the in-charge and co-in-charge of Karnataka, respectively.