New Delhi: Five-time MLA and former assembly speaker Rajeev Bindal has been appointed president of Himachal Pradesh BJP in the latest party rejig — a development that party sources said comes on the back of its loss in the hill state in the assembly polls last November.
Bindal, who comes from Solan in Himachal and has earlier served as Himachal BJP chief from 2018 until he resigned in 2020, is a close confidant of BJP national president J.P. Nadda and replaces Suresh Kumar Kashyap.
Among the other changes it made Sunday, the BJP swapped the positions of its Delhi general secretary (organsiation) Siddharthan with his Himachal Pradesh counterpart, Pawan Rana.
Sources in the party have said that the overhaul of the leadership in Himachal Pradesh was needed after the BJP’s back-to-back defeat in local polls as well as assembly elections. The party not only lost assembly elections to the Congress but faced defeat in the 2021 Mandi Lok Sabha bypoll, and the civic body elections in Palampur and Solan.
“As Pawan Rana was general secretary for a long time, he had gained an edge and played a key role in ticket distribution also,” a source from the party said, adding that ticket distribution this time had caused disgruntlement among party workers.
The development also comes on the back of the BJP’s loss in the Delhi local body elections. The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept the Delhi municipal elections in December 2022.
Party sources, however, told ThePrint that the changes in Rana’s and Siddharthan’s postings are not punitive and that the two positions were swapped given the “challenges” they faced in their respective units.
Both leaders are considered to be close to BJP national general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santhosh.
Election losses, need for makeover
Bindal’s appointment comes despite his loss to the Congress’s Ajay Solanki by a thin margin of over 1,600 votes in the Himachal assembly elections.
He resigned as state BJP chief on moral grounds in 2020 following corruption allegations in the state’s health department. The BJP was in power in the state at the time of the allegations.
Siddharthan, Himachal’s new general secretary (organisation), had been in the party’s Delhi unit for eight years. In that time, the state unit saw two major losses — the 2020 Delhi assembly elections and the 2022 civic elections. Soon after the civic poll results, Adesh Gupta resigned as Delhi BJP chief following allegations of mismanagement in ticket distribution.
He was replaced by Virendra Sachdeva.
Sources said it was clear after Adesh Gupta’s “removal” as the BJP Delhi president that the party’s central leadership wanted a makeover of the unit.
A similar situation arose in Himachal, where several party leaders had complained to BJP leader and Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah about Rana, said sources.
Among the major decisions that sources said cost the BJP was recommending a new candidate, Sanjay Sood, for the Shimla Urban seat and moving former minister Suresh Bharadwaj to Kasumpti.
The BJP lost both seats.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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