BJP appoints ex Aligarh Muslim University VC Tariq Mansoor as party vice president
New Delhi, Jul 29: BJP president J P Nadda rejigged the list of the party's central office-bearers on Saturday, bringing in a Pasmanda Muslim from Uttar Pradesh as one of its vice presidents and former Telangana unit chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar as a national general secretary.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has dropped C T Ravi, a leader from Karnataka, Dilip Saikia, a Lok Sabha MP from Assam, as its general secretaries, and Vinod Sonkar, Harish Dwivedi, both Lok Sabha MPs from Uttar Pradesh, and Sunil Deodhar as secretaries.
Saroj Pandey, a Rajya Sabha MP from Chhattisgarh, has been made a vice president, while Dilip Ghosh, a Lok Sabha MP from West Bengal, has been dropped.
Lata Usendi, a tribal leader from Chhattisgarh, has also been elevated to the post of vice president, underscoring the party's focus on the poll-bound state where the Congress is in power.
Radha Mohan Agrawal, a Rajya Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh, is one of the two new faces on the list which have nine general secretaries, seven of whom retain their position.
The new secretaries are Anil Antony, son of veteran Congress leader A K Antony, and Surendra Singh Nagar and Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, Rajya Sabha MP from UP and Assam respectively.
Nagar is an influential Gurjar leader from western UP while Tasa has long been the face of tea tribes in the northeastern state.
There are 13 vice presidents, nine general secretaries, including B L Santhosh as the in-charge of the organisation, and 13 secretaries on the list.
Former Union minister Radha Mohan Singh, a Lok Sabha MP from Bihar, has been dropped from the post of party vice president.
Former Uttar Pradesh BJP president and Rajya Sabha MP Laxmikant Bajpai is one of the two new vice presidents.
With Mansoor being inducted as a party vice president, there are two Muslims in the position now. Kerala leader Abdulla Kutty is another member from the minority community on the list.
The appointment of former Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) vice-chancellor Mansoor, now a BJP MLC in Uttar Pradesh, is being seen to be part of the party's overtures to Pasmanda (backward) Muslims.
Ravi's omission from the list of general secretaries, who spearhead the party's policies and agenda nationally and state-wise, unlike the vice presidents who are mostly figureheads, is being seen by some as a fallout of the BJP's big defeat in the recent assembly polls in Karnataka.
The four-term MLA had lost his seat in a close fight in the recently held assembly polls in Karnataka.
However, a party leader said not much should be read into the dropping of several office-bearers, as many of them, including Ravi, may contest the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and will be focussing on their likely constituencies.
The appointment of Bandi Sanjay weeks after his removal as the Telangana BJP president is a signal to the party cadres that he remains valuable to the national leadership, and that his ouster was a tactical call taken in the context of political realities in the southern state, sources said.
The party had recently appointed general secretary D Purandeswari as the president of its Andhra Pradesh unit.
There are no women now among the party's nine general secretaries, though there are five women vice presidents and four women secretaries in the list of new national office-bearers.
Former chief ministers Raman Singh, Vasundhara Raje, and Raghubar Das are among the seasoned leaders retained as vice presidents in the new list.
Arun Singh, Kailash Vijayvargiya, Dushyant Kumar Gautam, Tarun Chugh, Sunil Bansal, and Vinod Tawde also continue as general secretaries.
Nadda's tenure as BJP president was extended in January this year to allow him to be at the helm during the next Lok Sabha polls.
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Trump returns from China; terms meeting with Xi as 'G-2'
Washington (PTI): US President Donald Trump returned from a visit to China, describing his discussions with President Xi Jinping as a meeting of leaders of "two great countries".
Trump landed at the Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on the outskirts of the US capital on Friday evening, claiming to have struck important trade deals, including one for China's purchase of 200 aircraft from Boeing, with a promise for another 750, as well as agreements benefiting the American agriculture sector.
The US President reached here after a brief refuelling stop at Anchorage in Alaska.
“It’s the two great countries. I call it the G-2. This is the G-2. I think it’ll go down as a very important moment in history,” Trump told Fox News in an interview after meeting Xi on Thursday.
The Washington Post reported that Trump’s remarks put China on an equal footing with the US, exactly what Xi had aimed to achieve with the visit.
“Over two days of meetings here, the carefully choreographed pageantry and the reciprocal gestures of friendship and respect between the world’s two most powerful men displayed a geopolitical dynamic that the Chinese have long craved and Americans had resisted," the Post said.
Trump told Fox News that the relationship with Xi was important and suggested that China may not resort to any aggressive moves over Taiwan, at least till he is in office.
“It’s not a takeover. They just don’t want to see this place — we’ll call it a place because nobody knows how to define it — but they don’t want to see it go independent,” Trump said.
“I don’t think they’ll do anything when I’m here. When I’m not here. I think they might, to be honest with you,” Trump said.
"I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down," he said.
"We're not looking to have wars, and if you kept it the way it is, I think China's going to be OK with that," he added.
The US President said he had invited Xi for a visit to Washington in September.
“Xi has done something Chinese leaders have been working toward for decades — bringing an American president to Beijing as an undisputed peer,” said Julian Gewirtz, who served as China director on the National Security Council under President Joe Biden.
“Xi used the opulent optics of the visit to make clear to the world that China and the United States are the two dominant, equally matched superpowers. There is no going back.”
Trump’s friendly statements toward Xi and the Chinese people were being amplified in China’s state-controlled media, sending the message that “we’re getting along better with the Americans,” John Delury, a senior Fellow at the Asia Society, was quoted as saying by The New York Times.
It was understandable that Trump wanted to be polite to Xi, but that the American president’s gushing approach “weakens Trump and the US”, R. Nicholas Burns, the ambassador to China during the Biden administration, was quoted as saying in The New York Times.
“Xi did not hesitate to warn Trump over Taiwan. Trump should not hesitate to be frank about our concerns, too,” he said.
Trump and Xi are expected to meet at least three times this year.
The US President has invited Xi to the White House in September.
Trump may travel to Shenzhen in China for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in November. And Xi could come to the G-20 summit in December in Miami.
“This is a summit again that was heavier on symbolism than it was on substance — focus on managing problems, not on solving the problems that exist between the US and China,” said Rush Doshi, former National Security Council deputy senior director for China and Taiwan in the Biden administration.
“The way that both leaders talked about the future indicates that this is going to be part of a process that will play out this year,” said Kurt Campbell, former deputy secretary of State in the Biden administration.
