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Venkaiah may announce new team today

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI JULY 10. The filling up of key posts in the Bharatiya Janata Party is expected to be done either tomorrow or by July 13. And very shortly, some more vacancies could arise in the Council of Ministers leading to another mini-reshuffle.

The BJP president, M. Venkaiah Naidu, has already held a series of meetings over the last few days with senior leaders of several State units, especially Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and this process is expected to be completed in a couple of days.

What he has promised is that the "average age'' of the new BJP team will be considerably lower than before.

These meetings — the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, was present at some of them — would take a final view of changes in the top leaders of these State units. One meeting on Rajasthan has already taken place. This evening Mr. Naidu met the former Rajasthan party chief, Ramdas Aggarwal, and another is scheduled tomorrow evening when Mr. Advani will also be present.

To some extent, the changes in the States are tied up with decisions to be taken on the new team of office-bearers at the central party headquarters.

If Vasundhara Raje, currently Minister of State, is not sent to Rajasthan as State unit president, she may well be asked to work for the party as a member of the central team.

In fact, Mr. Naidu may announce his new team of central party office-bearers tomorrow, or he may prefer to wait till July 13 by when some crucial decisions will be taken in relation to State units. What is being talked about is the Minister for Sports, Uma Bharati, as president of the Madhya Pradesh BJP unit, Ms. Raje as Rajasthan unit chief or a general secretary at the central party office, and Madan Lal Khurana, current `prabhari' for Delhi, as Delhi unit president.

The former Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, has already been appointed party spokesperson and he is expected to get one of the five key posts of general secretary. The former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Rajnath Singh, and outgoing general secretary, Sanjay Joshi, are tipped to fill two more of the general secretary slots.

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