Sudha Yadav
Secretary
Sudha Yadav’s tryst with politics was providential. After her husband, a deputy commandant in the BSF, died during the Kargil conflict, the BJP persuaded this PhD in chemistry to take the electoral plunge. It was a meeting with the then home minister L.K. Advani that made her contest from Haryana’s Mahendragarh. As an MP, she was known for the judicious use of the Local Area Development funds. She lost the 2004 election to her Congress rival.

Bijoya Chakrabarty
Vice-president
Bijoya Chakrabarty is the party’s saleable face in the Northeast. A grassroots leader from Assam, she is a former Union minister of state in the Vajpayee Cabinet. Having begun her career with the Praja Socialist Party in the mid-60s, Chakrabarty is also a keen sports enthusiast. Having worked with the party’s farmer’s cell earlier, she has published three novels in Assamese.

Saroj Pandey
Secretary
This former Chhattisgarh BJP general secretary Saroj Pandey is a full-time political worker. The daughter of a former BHEL employee, who now runs a school, Pandey is known as a feisty leader and an excellent orator. A two-time mayor of Durg, she has two MA degrees. She has overcome various odds while moving up the ladder. An able party spokesperson, she took the party’s battle to the Jogis’ camp in the state. She was also active in organising the Chhattisgarh leg of Rajanth Singh’s Bharat Surakhsha Yatra a couple of years ago.

Sangeeta Singh Deo
National Executive member
Married into a royal family, the MP representing Bolangir in Orissa, is a graduate of Delhi’s Jesus and Mary College. She joined the BJP along with her husband, now a minister in the Naveen Patnaik Government, and father-in-law R N Singh Deo, a former chief minister, in 1989. With three successive victories by impressive margins under her belt, she is a regular with questions and pointed interventions in the House. Known to occupy the rows just below the Lok Sabha Press gallery (it helps MPs to get their interventions noticed), she also feels strongly about women’s issues. She likes to follow tennis and basketball and her only daughter, now 21, is studying finance in Switzerland.

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