Varun Gandhi dropped as general secretary in Amit Shah's team

NEW DELHI: Varun Gandhi was on Saturday dropped as general secretary by BJP president Amit Shah who constituted his new team, inducting former Karnataka chief minister BS Yeddyurappa as vice-president and new RSS pointsman Ram Madhav as general secretary.

A week after his formal anointment as party president, Amit Shah announced his new team of party office bearers that includes 11 vice-presidents, eight general secretaries and 14 secretaries. The new team also includes 10 party spokespersons, five of them are new.

While dropping Sultanpur MP Varun, whose mother Maneka Gandhi is a minister in Modi government, Shah has retained general secretaries JP Nadda, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Murlidhar Rao and Ramlal, who will continue to take care of the organization affairs.

Party sources said that Varun has not been included because his mother has been inducted in the Modi Cabinet.

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The four new general secretaries are Ram Madhav, the RSS face who was sent to the party recently, outgoing BJP Mahila Morcha chief Saroj Pandey, Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan Bhupendra Yadav and Ram Shankar Katheriya.

Yeddyurappa, who had formed his own outfit after being forced to quit as chief minister following corruption charges but had rejoined BJP on poll eve, is among the 11 vice-presidents in Shah's new team. Former Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has been retained as vice-president.

Varun Gandhi

The five spokespersons who have been retained in Amit Shah's team are MJ Akbar, Shahnawaz Hussain, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Meenakshi Lekhi and Vijay Sonkar Shastri.

The new spokespersons are Nalin Kohli, Sambit Patra, Anil Baluni, G V L Narasimha Rao and Lalita Kumaramangalam.

Among the new secretaries, Shrikant Sharma and Sidharth Nath Singh have been given the responsibility of crucial Uttar Pradesh.