Ram Madhav, once an important leader in BJP but sidelined over last few years, was sent back to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and appointed a member of its national executive council on Saturday.
Madhav, who started his career in the RSS, has been appointed as a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Karyakarini (national executive council). His new role will require him to be in touch with intellectuals and promote the initiatives of the organization by meeting think tanks, writers and like-minded academicians.
The appointment of the former BJP national general secretary was among the changes the RSS made in its organization during its annual meeting of Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha's (ABPS), RSS' top decision-making body, in Bengaluru of Karnataka.
Madhav's tryst with BJP
Credited for training young RSS workers to proficiently use technology and social media to promote the organization's interests, Madhav was sent to BJP from RSS and was made one of the general secretaries of the saffron party under the leadership of Amit Shah.
Soon after starting his stint in BJP, he became synonymous with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's foreign trips and was given several key responsibilities and was tasked with overseeing party's affairs and stitching alliances in North East and Jammu and Kashmir. He was instrumental in forging an alliance with Mehbooba Mufti's PDP to become a part of the Jammu and Kashmir government for the first time.
Madhav is said to have been instrumental in Modi's presence at Madison Square in New York and in Sydney.
By 2018, he began falling out of favour in BJP as the party started keeping him out of the Prime Minister's foreign trips and assigned his job in North East and Jammu and Kashmir to other leaders. His high profile nature and his interventions are said to have annoyed then BJP chief Amit Shah.
It is said that Madhav further deteriorated his position in the party by entering into a feud with Assam's party strongman Himanta Biswa Sarma, who crossed over to BJP from Congress. Sarma, who is considered an asset in North East, was said to have complained to Shah about him.
His career in BJP touched abyss in September 2020, when the party dropped him as national general secretary when party chief JP Nadda announced his team.
Not only he was dropped out of the party's key post, but BJP also did not send him to Rajya Sabha either despite the fact that it chose many other junior leaders for the Upper House of the Parliament.
'Too ambitious'
"He is a very ambitious leader but may have been asked to return as he had apparently fallen out with Amit Shahji," a Karnataka BJP leader was quoted as saying by The Print.
Another BJP leader told The Telegraph, "He now has to start afresh and toil in the RSS before he can make it to the BJP again, and nobody knows when his time will come".
