BJP’s comeback club: Old faces, new power

New Delhi: From former Union minister Smriti Irani and RSS veteran Ram Madhav to former chief ministers Biplab Kumar Deb and Tirath Singh Rawat, several BJP leaders who had either slipped out of the party's top organisational structure or seen their political stock diminish have returned to prominent roles in its new national team announced on Monday.Irani, once among the most prominent faces of the Modi government, has been appointed a national general secretary, one of the most important organisational positions in the BJP.Also Read: BJP announces new national office-bearers team under President Nitin Nabin; Smriti Irani, Piyush Goyal among key names, check full listHer political profile had taken a hit after her defeat from Amethi in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Irani, who had pulled off one of the BJP's biggest victories in 2019 by defeating Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in his family bastion, lost five years later to Congress candidate Kishori Lal Sharma by over 1.67 lakh votes.The defeat also meant her exit from the Union government after a decade in which she had handled portfolios including human resource development, textiles, information and broadcasting, and women and child development.Her appointment as general secretary puts her firmly back in the party's top organisational hierarchy ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections due next year.Another striking return is that of Ram Madhav, who has been made a national vice-president.A former RSS spokesperson who was deputed to the BJP in 2014, Madhav emerged as one of the party's most influential general secretaries during its first term in power under Modi. He played a key role in the BJP's expansion in the Northeast and was one of the principal architects of its alliance with the PDP in Jammu and Kashmir after the 2014 assembly polls.His influence waned after the BJP-PDP government collapsed in 2018, and he was dropped as a national general secretary when then BJP president J P Nadda constituted his team in September 2020. He subsequently largely disappeared from the BJP's organisational front line.The BJP had brought him back to oversee its Jammu and Kashmir Assembly election campaign along with Union minister G Kishan Reddy in 2024.Former Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb has also been elevated as a national general secretary.Deb had led the BJP to its historic victory in Tripura in 2018, ending 25 years of uninterrupted Left rule, but was abruptly asked to step down as chief minister in May 2022 and replaced by Manik Saha. The BJP never publicly gave a detailed reason for the change.Unlike some others in the new team, however, Deb did not remain sidelined for long. Within months, the party made him its Haryana in-charge and sent him to the Rajya Sabha. He subsequently won the Tripura West Lok Sabha seat in 2024 and played a key role in scripting the party's history as its election co-in-charge.Another former chief minister making his way into the national organisation is Tirath Singh Rawat, who has been appointed a national vice-president.Rawat's tenure as Uttarakhand chief minister was among the shortest in the state's history. A Lok Sabha MP when he unexpectedly replaced Trivendra Singh Rawat in March 2021, he resigned less than four months later.Officially, his exit was attributed to the constitutional requirement that he become a member of the state legislature within six months and uncertainty over holding a by-election during the Covid pandemic. At the time, he was also facing a lot of flak over a string of controversial remarks that he had made. Subsequently, Rawat receded from the national political spotlight.Former Rajasthan BJP president Satish Poonia's appointment as national general secretary similarly marks a political recovery.An OBC leader belonging to the influential Jat community, Poonia headed the Rajasthan BJP between 2019 and 2023.He was replaced as state president ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections and then lost his Amber seat in the polls. He was also not fielded in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.The party, however, subsequently made him its Haryana in-charge. The BJP's victory for a third consecutive term in Haryana in 2024 strengthened Poonia's credentials. He has since entered the Rajya Sabha, and his elevation on Monday brings him into the BJP's central decision-making apparatus.Also Read: Nitin Nabin’s team does a fine balancing act between the old and the newThe changes in the BJP's IT team have also brought back two figures who had once occupied important positions in the party's social media machinery before falling out of prominence -- Priti Gandhi and Haryana leader Arun Yadav.Yadav was removed as the Haryana BJP's IT cell chief in July 2022 amid a social-media storm over an old post concerning Islam that had resurfaced five years after it was made, sparking demands for his arrest.Yadav, who had left a corporate career to work full-time for the BJP and become one of its most aggressive digital faces, subsequently worked his way back into the state organisation and became the Haryana BJP's social media in-charge during the 2024 Haryana Assembly election, when the BJP defied predictions of a Congress victory to return to power.Priti Gandhi, another long-time BJP social media activist, has also been appointed a national social media co-convenor. Gandhi was among the party's early digital campaigners.She was embroiled in controversy ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election after WikiLeaks publicly accused her of circulating a fabricated endorsement attributed to its founder Julian Assange describing Modi as "incorruptible".