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BJP MP Sukanta Majumdar replaces Dilip Ghosh as party's Bengal president
Dilip Ghosh, meanwhile, has been made the BJP's national vice-president alongside former Uttarakhand governor Baby Rani Maurya.
In a major change of guard, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday appointed its Balurghat parliamentarian Sukanta Majumdar as the party's West Bengal president, replacing Dilip Ghosh.
BJP national general secretary Arun Singh said in a statement late in the evening that the party national president JP Nadda made the appointment.
Meanwhile, the BJP elevated Dilip Ghosh and former Uttarakhand governor Baby Rani Maurya as the party's national vice-presidents.
The rejig comes 10 days before the assembly bypolls in the state, including in the crucial Bhabanipur constituency where West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee faces BJP's Priyanka Tibrewal.
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A Doctorate in Botany, 41-year-old Sukanta Majumdar is a first-time parliamentarian who was recently handed over the charge of overssing Samserganj and Jangipur assembly seats, which will go to the bypolls on September 30, along with Bhabanipur.
Majumdar has been a pracharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the BJP, till he joined the Bengal BJP in 2014.
The change in BJP's leadership structure in Bengal also followed a number of high-profile defections from the party, including Mukul Roy, Tanmoy Ghosh, Biswajit Das, Soumen Roy and Babul Supriyo, following its defeat in the assembly elections. All of them crossed over to Trinamool Congress in the past couple of months.
Singer-turned-politician Babul Supriyo blamed Dilip Ghosh for BJP's rout in the elections as he said the latter's “comments” during the poll campaigns were “incongruous with the ethos of Bengalis.”
