LS polls: BJP names 17 in-charges

New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah on Wednesday appointed the party’s in-charges for the Lok Sabha polls for 17 states, drafting in Union minister Prakash Javadekar for steering the campaign in Rajasthan and Thawarchand Gehlot, another minister, for Uttarakhand. Govardhan Jhadapia, a Gujarat leader, Dushyant Gautam, who is a party vice president, and Narottam Mishra, who is from Madhya Pradesh, will be in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, politically most crucial state, where the BJP is likely to face a tough challenge from a prospective alliance of the SP and the BSP.
BJP general secretaries Bhupender Yadav and Anil Jain have been assigned Bihar and Chhattisgarh respectively, according to a statement. Rajya Sabha member V Muraleedharan and party secretary Deodhar Rao will be in-charge of Andhra Pradesh. Mahendra Singh and O P Mathur will be in-charge of Assam and Gujarat respectively, the statement said.
The BJP has also appointed in-charges and co-incharges for several other states, including Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland, Punjab, Telangana and Sikkim among others.
Meanwhile in UP, rebel SP leader Shivpal Yadav, who recently floated the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia), has said he was willing to join hands with the
Congress to defeat the BJP in the coming Lok Sabha elections. To a question on the possibility of coalitions for the next year’s Lok Sabha polls, he said, “We have our party’s organisation in 75 districts of the state…the party has decided to contest all the seats against the BJP…to defeat the BJP, we can also enter into an alliance with the Congress”. (PTI)