BJP membership numbers have see-sawed over past 5 yrs
If the BJP is to be believed, none of its 11 crore members, enrolled five years ago, have left the party or even died. The party’s working president J.P. Nadda Thursday declared that the population of only seven countries is more than the number of BJP members (18 crores), as it stands today, with the latest membership drive adding 7 crore people to the earlier 11 crore members during a previous such drive launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November 2014. The party is in the process of verifying the fresh members enrolled during the latest drive that ended last week. The results of the previous membership drive were a bit puzzling. In March 2015, the BJP had declared that it had become the largest party in the world with 8.8 crore members. Four months later, party president Amit Shah said 11 crore BJP members would be made partners in nation-building. In April 2018, party leader Ali Mohammad Mir put the figure at 14 crores. At the two-day national executive meeting of the party in September 2017, Shah revised the figures, putting the number at 8 crores on the first day and 9 crores on the second. In subsequent weeks and months, though, the BJP president had maintained the figure at 11 crores.
PM’s chosen top bureaucrat set to retire, race on to replace him
If there’s one ministry that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has laid extra emphasis on, and pushed doggedly in his first term realising its electoral potential, it has been the rural development one. To that effect, the PM has relied heavily on secretary, rural development, Amarjeet Sinha, a 1983-batch officer, who joined the ministry as an additional secretary. Sinha is known to be close to Modi and has his ear. The PM, in turn, is believed to entirely trust the IAS officer with the execution of key schemes. The PMO has been holding direct and frequent interactions with him. In fact, Modi’s pet scheme rural housing has been spearheaded by Sinha and reaped positive dividends for the BJP government. However, Sinha is now due to retire by the end of this year, which has left several in the bureaucratic circles talking about who could possibly replace him, given how key this position is to the PM. With the post also having become coveted, several officers are hoping to strike gold. Sources say the PMO is pondering over this matter.
(Contributors: DK Singh and Ruhi Tewari)
Also read: Modi govt clamps down on IAS, its association goes conspicuously silent