NEW DELHI: In a bid to win back the support base among the upper castes in Madhya Pradesh, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief JP Nadda on Saturday appointed the Khajurao Lok Sabha MP Vishnu Dutt Sharma as the state unit chief.
The BJP chief also appointed K Surendran as the Kerala unit chief.
The two new chiefs of the BJP in MP and Kerala come with the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) pedigree and are in late 40s.
Former BJP chief Amit Shah had appointed Jabalpur MP Rakesh Singh as the state unit chief of Madhya Pradesh a few months before the state Assembly elections.
Though Singh along with the former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan hailed from the OBC background, Shah has gone away with aggressive bid to win over the backward castes.
However, the gamble didn’t pay the electoral dividends. The upper castes had backed the Congress, allowing the party to wrest power in the state.
With Sharma as the Brahmin face, the BJP is hoping to win back the electorally influential caste.
Besides, Nadda in his choices for MP and Kerala has shown that he would be backing younger generation to take over the leadership role in states, with the party bracing up for expansion of support base, particularly the youth.
Surendran had made a name for himself with the party led agitation against the Left government on Sabarimala issue.
Coming from the ABVP background, Surendran is the BJP’s long-term investment to build a strong base in the state where the saffron outfit wants to win support base on a long term, capitalising on the groundwork done by the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS).
The BJP chief is also likely to appoint a new chief in Delhi, who could be entrusted with the task to rebuild the party.