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Adesh Kumar Gupta replaces Manoj Tiwari as Delhi BJP chief
New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief JP Nadda on Tuesday appointed Adesh Kumar Gupta, a councillor from West Patel Nagar, as the new chief of its Delhi
New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief JP Nadda on Tuesday appointed Adesh Kumar Gupta, a councillor from West Patel Nagar, as the new chief of its Delhi unit over three months after the saffron party got a drubbing from the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the assembly elections.
Gupta will replace Bhojpuri actor-turned-politician and a Member of Parliament (MP) from north-east Delhi, Manoj Tiwari, who held the post for three-and-a-half years.
Gupta (51), who started his political career with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, has risen through the ranks in the party and was elected the mayor of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation in 2018. He held various posts in the BJP’s Delhi unit, including the office secretary in 2012.
Political analysts are of the opinion that Gupta’s appointment is a part of the BJP strategy to woo baniyas, or traders, and Punjabis, its core support base, in the national capital.
The BJP appointed Tiwari, who had joined the party just before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, as its Delhi unit chief in December 2016 in a bid to woo the Purvanchal community, those who hail from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and a significant vote bank in state politics.
His elevation was also predicated to Delhi elections that were held in February, where the BJP performed disastrously and managed to win only eight of the 70 seats.
Initially, Tiwari’s ascent in Delhi BJP had benefitted the party, as it not only won the municipal elections in 2017 for the third consecutive term, despite huge anti-incumbency, but also bettered its score in several seats.
The party had projected Tiwari as its Purvanchali face to galvanise the support of the community. The BJP won all seven seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections under Tiwari’s leadership. But the humiliating defeat in Delhi polls put paid to his rising career graph. “This is a routine appointment, which was due for long. The appointment couldn’t be done earlier due to elections in Delhi, followed by riots and then the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak,” said a senior BJP leader.
“The decision to appoint a baniya shows that the party wants to keep its core support base intact. Besides, the next elections in Delhi are of the civic bodies that are still two years away. Gupta will be able to win civic polls for the party,” he added.
This is not the first time that the BJP has appointed a councillor as its Delhi chief. In 2014, the BJP had appointed Satish Upadhyay, a one-time councillor from Malviya Nagar in south Delhi, as its state unit chief.
