New Delhi, Aug. 19 -- The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday announced state in-charges for poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, where the party is eyeing a third term and for Punjab, where it has positioned itself as the principal opposition and the main challenger to the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party. Rajya Sabha MP and national general secretary Vinod Tawde has been given charge of UP while Jagdish Ishwarbhai Patel, a national secretary will be the co-in-charge. In poll-bound Punjab, newly appointed national general secretary Dr. Satish Poonia has been made in-charge. Poonia is also a Rajya Sabha MP. Both UP and Punjab will go to the polls in 2027. Rajya Sabha lawmaker and former national general secretary Tarun Chugh has been made in-charge of Gujarat. The announcements were made a day after the party announced the new team of 65-national officer bearers, which includes 12 women. Tawde, 63, who earlier oversaw elections in Keralam and was in-charge of Bihar is now counted among the party's main election strategists. Hailing from Maharashtra, he cut his teeth in politics as a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and then worked closely with the late Pramod Mahajan, honing his skills in electioneering and organisational work. UP, is not a new turf for Tawde, who oversaw the organisational election in the state, which is politically significant and sends the largest number of lawmakers to the Lok Sabha. "He has spent enough time on the ground and meeting both the cadre and people at large to acquaint himself with the intricacies of Hindi heartland politics. His experience in Bihar, where caste politics is as dominant as UP, will come in handy," said a party functionary. He also played a key role in managing the expansion of the Council of Ministers in Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Tawde, was also the election in-charge for Droupadi Murmu, when she was named the NDA's candidate for the presidential election in 2022 and for C.P. Radhakrishnan during the 2025 Vice-Presidential elections. He was appointed state in-charge for Haryana in 2020 and for Bihar in 2022, where he oversaw the party's work in the run-up to the assembly election and worked behind the scenes to ensure a smooth handover of chief ministership from JDU's Nitish Kumar to Samrat Choudhary, BJP's first chief minister in the state. In UP his task will involve drafting an election strategy to counter anti-incumbency after two terms in power, which has been exacerbated by the upper caste expressing disenchantment with the party, students' unrest over paper leaks and lack of employment avenues and the most recent embarrassment for the party when donation theft at the Ram Temple in Ayodhya came to light. "The biggest challenge, however, will be keeping the coalition of non-Yadav OBCs and Dalits intact. The allegation of so-called 'thakurvaad' against CM Yogi Adityanath (promoting his own community) has upset the upper caste and the other castes." said the person quoted above. In Punjab Poonia, 61, will be overseeing a turf that is not a stronghold of the party. Since the BJP is yet to firm up its alliances, Poonia who also began his political activism in ABVP and was an RSS swayamsevak (full timer), will also have to navigate and negotiate alliance politics. There is no word yet on whether the BJP will renew its alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal, its old ally that left the NDA in 2020. A former president of the BJP's Rajasthan unit, the party is banking on his image of a "strategist with great people connect" to help shore its presence in Punjab, said a second party leader. "His experience in the Sangh, where they focus on hitting the ground running comes handy in election campaigns. He is very effective in reaching out to the grassroots workers and getting the entire cadre up and running." the second leader said. Poonia was in-charge of elections in Haryana in 2024 when the BJP faced serious anti-incumbency but eventually won for a third time. Chugh, 53, who is now the new office in-charge of the BJP has been given the party stronghold of Gujarat. Having been state in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab, there was speculation that Chugh could be one of the key faces of the party in the poll-bound state. Known for his affability and prowess at organising and executing, Chugh will be overseeing organisational issues in the state where the BJP has been in power continuously since 2001....