Eight months after taking over as National President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Jagat Prakash Nadda on Saturday announced the 70-member national executive committee as his new team.

What is more surprising is the absence of big names like G V L Narasimha Rao, Ram Madhav and P Muralidhar Rao in the list. While GVL was the national official spokesman, Ram Madhav from Andhra and P Muralidhar Rao from Telangana was the national general secretaries in the previous term. It is yet not known whether they will be given another assignment. Tejashwi Surya (BJP MP) has been made the new President of Yuva Morcha; the party’s youth wing. Tejaswi replaces Poonam Mahajan.

The new team was expected in April but due to the coronavirus epidemic and nationwide lockdown, the party high command could neither convene the new team nor convene a meeting of national officials by calling a meeting of the National Executive and Council. Reportedly, he had prepared a list of national officials a few months back after brainstorming with senior party leaders.

In Nadda's new team, for the first time, 12 vice presidents have been appointed. They include two leaders from Jharkhand -- former chief minister Raghuvar Das and MP Annapurna Devi, besides Dr. Raman Singh and Vasundhara Raje Scindia, former chief ministers of Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan respectively. Mandsaur MP Sudhir Gupta is made the co-treasurer of the party.

While Nadda dropped Ram Madhav, Dr. Anil Jain, Murlidhar Rao and Saroj Pande as general secretaries -- sources say they may be given new responsibilities -- many new faces were given a place in the team as general secretaries. While Kailash Vijayvargiya retained his position, the other new general secretaries are Bhupendra Yadav, Arun Singh, Dushyant Kumar Gautam, D. Purandeshwari, CT Ravi, Tarun Chugh and Dilip Saikia. Among them, Tarun Chugh, who was a national secretary in-charge of Andaman and Nicobar, got elevated to the position of general secretary of the party.

In the new organizational setup, Tejaswi Surya replaced Poonam Mahajan as president of Bharatiya Janata Party Yuva Morcha while Alka Gurjar was made its national secretary. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore was appointed as the party's national spokesperson while Anil Baluni was made national head of the party's media department.  Lal Singh Arya is now the president of BJP's Anusuchit Jati Morcha while former minister Omprakash Dhruve is made its national secretary.

In the new team, Nadda has tried to give equal participation to every state.