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His identity as a Brahmin leader from eastern Uttar Pradesh came up repeatedly in conversations with BJP leaders.
The rapid rise of former Basti MP Harish Dwivedi in the BJP’s national organisation has become a major talking point within party circles, especially after the latest organisational reshuffle handed him charge of two politically significant states, Bihar and Karnataka. Dwivedi, who lost the Basti Lok Sabha seat in 2024 after winning it twice, was appointed a BJP national general secretary in August this year.
Barely a month later, BJP president Nitin Nabin gave him organisational responsibility for both Bihar and Karnataka. BJP leaders who spoke to Read on condition of anonymity said the sequence of appointments shows the central leadership has continued to repose confidence in Dwivedi as an organisation man, and appears to have bigger responsibilities in mind for him.
“His rise after losing the Lok Sabha election is significant. The party has continued to increase his organisational responsibilities rather than treating the electoral defeat as a setback,” said one BJP leader. A second leader said the Bihar-Karnataka pairing was notable precisely because the two states sit in very different political and organisational terrains, with Bihar anchoring the Hindi belt and Karnataka giving him a foothold in the south. The assignments, the leader said, signal that the central leadership wants Dwivedi’s organisational profile to extend well beyond Uttar Pradesh.
His association with Bihar isn’t new. He was made co-in-charge of Bihar BJP in 2020, when Bhupender Yadav was state in-charge, and was elevated to full in-charge in October 2021, replacing Yadav, with Anupam Hazra brought in as co-in-charge. In September 2022, Vinod Tawde took over as Bihar in-charge, with Dwivedi continuing as co-in-charge.
His latest posting is thus a return to a state he has worked closely with for years, but this time with a much higher organisational rank, as a national general secretary simultaneously overseeing Karnataka as well. Several leaders also framed Dwivedi’s rise against his uneasy equation with the Uttar Pradesh leadership, noting he has not always seen eye to eye with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on various issues.
That his central organisational career has kept climbing regardless, even after the 2024 defeat, suggests the party’s national leadership is backing him independent of his electoral record in UP. His identity as a Brahmin leader from eastern Uttar Pradesh came up repeatedly in these conversations. Leaders said this, combined with his familiarity with Bihar’s organisational structure from his earlier stints there, may point to the party grooming him as a bigger organisational face, particularly in the Hindi belt where the party is battling the perception of being ‘anti-forward”.
Dwivedi’s political roots lie in the RSS-BJP ecosystem. He came up through the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the BJP’s youth wing before entering electoral politics. He lost the Basti Sadar assembly seat in 2012, then won the Basti Lok Sabha seat in 2014 and retained it in 2019. In 2024, he lost it to Samajwadi Party’s Ram Prasad Chaudhary by 1,00,994 votes.
Rather than side-lining him, that defeat coincided with a deeper move into the national organisation. He took charge of Assam before being elevated to national general secretary in August 2026. Weeks later, the BJP’s 23 September reshuffle added Bihar and Karnataka to his portfolio, with Sangeeta Yadav and Rohan Gupta named co-incharges in Bihar and Kasm Venkateshwaralu co-incharge in Karnataka.