The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday named Swatantra Dev Singh as its party chief in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra public works minister Chandrakant Patil as the state’s party unit chief. Patil takes charge right ahead of Maharashtra’s assembly elections that are expected to be held in October this year. Mangal Prabhat Lodha has been appointed to lead Mumbai’s party unit.

Swatantra Dev Singh, an OBC leader who hails from Mirzapur but is also associated with the Bundelkhand region, is UP’s state transport minister. He replaces Mahendra Nath Pandey, a Brahmin who was inducted into Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s council of ministers in May this year.

The decision comes a day after chief minister Yogi Adityanath met party chief Amit Shah and working president JP Nadda in Delhi.

UP and Maharashtra are among the three states where the BJP had been looking for a new face after the state BJP chiefs - Danve Raosaheb Dadarao of Maharashtra and Mahendra Nath Pandey of UP - were inducted as union ministers in PM Modi’s government.

There is no word yet on the third state, Bihar, where Nityanand Rai, a OBC leader , was given charge of the state in November 2016 and is considered a confidant of the party’s national president Amit Shah. Rai is now the junior minister in home ministry, headed by Shah.

The party constitution allows state unit chief allows two terms but the party had decided to look for their replacements under its “one-man-one-post” rule.

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First Published: Jul 16, 2019 15:42 IST