Riot-accused MLA Rana is now VP in UP BJP team

Lucknow: Controversial BJP MLA and Muzaffarnagar riot accused Suresh Rana is one of the 15 vice-presidents hand-picked by UP BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya. The announcement of the state team was eagerly awaited for quite sometime now. Coincidently, the announcement came on Tuesday, within hours of Congress's rejig of its UP team.Rana, an MLA from Thana Bhawan in Shamli, had been booked under the NSA for allegedly inciting a mob during the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. He, along with the other party MLA Sangeet Som, had to spend some time in jail before the NSA was removed.One highlight of the new team is that Maurya has retained heirs of senior party leaders who were part of former UP chief Laxmkant Bajpai's team as well. Political analysts say that its has been done to keep leaders like Union home minister Rajnath Singh, Rajasthan governor Kalyan Singh and former Lucknow MP Lalji Tandon in good humour.So, Rajnath's son Pankaj Singh has retained his general secretary's post while Ashutosh Tandon and Rajveer Singh, too, continue to be vice-presidents. The panel of 38 office-bearers has names picked up from every caste and region considering the team would take the party into the electoral Maha Kumbh of 2017.The four Dalits include Kanta Kardam from Meerut , Ramnaresh Rawat Barabanki as vice-presidents;Vidhya Sagar Sonkar as general secretary and Manju Diler from Sambhal as secretary. The team in total is a mix of new and young faces with old and experience.While the team has some leaders close to organisation general secretary Sunil Bansal, like Govind Shukla from Amethi , IIT pass-out JPS Rathore (both vice-presidents), Ashok Kataria (general secregtary) and Subhash Yadav (secretary), the inclusion of Kanpur MLA Salil Bishnoi has been done to woo the Vaishya community.Around a dozen office-bearers from the previous team have been accommodated. Some of them are newly elected Rajya Sabha member Shivpratap Shukla as vice-president, Dharmpal Singh, general secretary in the earlier team and now vice-president and Dayashankar Singh, who has been elevated from secretary to vice president. Besides, Ashwani Tyagi, Ashok Kataria, Anup Gupta and Swatantra Deo Singh retain general secretary post. Santosh Singh is also back as secretary in Team Keshav.Apart from Shivpratap Shukla, the other MP who has found a place in the state team is Baghpat MP and former Mumbai commissioner Satyapal Singh. Singh is now vice-president in the new UP BJP team. BJP spokesman in the present team Viay Bahadur Pathak also gets the reward for his closeness with Union Minister Kalraj Misra and his lobbying skill to get his elevation to the general secretary's post.