New Delhi:

The BJP on Saturday announced it would replace senior leaders like Ram Madhav, P Muralidhar Rao, Anil Jain, Saroj Pandey as general secretaries with new faces in a reshuffle of the party’s office bearers.

Among the prominent changes was the appointment of Tejasvi Surya, an MP from Karnataka, as president of the youth wing Yuva Morcha in place of Poonam Mahajan.

The party increased the number of national spokespersons to 23 with MP Anil Baluni retaining the position of media in-charge and elevated as chief spokesperson.

The new spokespersons include Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Sanju Verma, Iqbal Singh Lalpura, Aparajita Sarangi, Heena Gavit, M Kikon, Nupur Sharma, Raju Bisht and KK Sharma.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed the changes on Twitter.

Congratulations and best wishes to the new team. I am confident they will uphold the glorious tradition of our Party of serving the people of India selflessly and with dedication. May they work hard to empower the poor and marginalised. https://t.co/5beiCTkcsA

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 26, 2020

The new appointments were announced by BJP president JP Nadda in a reorganisation that party sources had said was aimed at combining young people, women as well as experienced faces.

This is first reshuffle under Mr Nadda who was elected unopposed as party chief in January, taking over from Amit Shah.

Radha Mohan Singh, Mukul Roy, Rekha Verma, Annapurna Devi, Bharti Shiyal, DK Aruna, M Chuba Ao, AP Abdullakutty were appointed national vice presidents in the reshuffle.

Among the new general secretaries appointed were Dushyant Kumar Gautam, D Purandeswari, CT Ravi and Tarun Chugh.

Other appointments include K Laxman as head of the OBC (Other Backward Classes) Morcha, Jamal Siddiqui as chief of the minority wing and Lal Singh Arya as chief of the SC (Scheduled Castes) Morcha.

Ram Madhav reacted to the new appointments on Twitter, saying, “Congratulations to the newly appointed office-bearers of d BJP. Grateful to d party leadership for providing me d opportunity to serve for one term as Gen Sec.”