Patna, Jan. 11: The new state BJP chief, Nityanand Rai, is believed to be selecting a new team that will replace the 27-member one under his predecessor Mangal Pandey.

Mangal is an upper caste Brahmin from north Bihar's Siwan district and upper castes formed nearly half of his 27-member team of vice-presidents, general secretaries and secretaries. Nityanand is a Yadav from the Yadav-dominated Vaishali region of north Bihar. People from other backward classes (OBC) and extremely backward classes (EBC) are likely to dominate his team.

Nityanand's anointment last month and the ongoing churn in the BJP's Bihar unit indicate two new trends in the party. First is the BJP high command's proclivity to put in place a larger strategy to counter the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad combine that represents the OBC-EBC might. Second, Nityanand's "assignment" to rebuild his team indicates a new order in the party - one that has the imprint of Narendra Modi-Amit Shah's style, coupled with the RSS's social engineering.

Most frontline BJP-RSS leaders desisted from speaking officially on the party strategy.

"The BJP's clout is among upper castes, who constitute 13-14 per cent of the state's population," a senior BJP strategist said on condition of anonymity. "It depended on Nitish for EBC and a section of OBC votes. The party now requires to expand its outreach to bring in OBCs and EBCs, who together form 70 per cent of the state's voters."

For the first time in nearly one-and-a-half decades, both the BJP state president and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly are from backward classes. While Nityanand is a Yadav, Leader of Opposition Prem Kumar is a Kahar (EBC) from Gaya in south Bihar.

Throughout the Nitish-led NDA rule, the BJP had upper-caste members as its state presidents (see chart). Nityanand replaced Pandey on December 1, heralding a new order. In effecting the "new order", the BJP-RSS's high command seems to have sidelined the "old order" leaders belonging to backward classes. For example, former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi was the BJP's face for a long period of time during the Vajpayee-Advani era. But he now seems to have been driven to the periphery. Same is the case with Nand Kishore Yadav, the party's Yadav face for long.

Sources said the RSS-BJP high command neither consulted Sushil nor Nand Kishore before anointing Nityanand as party chief.

And the two seem to have no clue about the new team of office-bearers Nityanand is working on.

"The Sangh (read RSS-BJP combine) is a dynamic mechanism," said Akhilesh Tiwary, a senior RSS functionary and former vice-president of the Patna University Students' Union. "At the political level, the Sangh is required to counter the strength of the forces in power. For this, it is mandatory for the BJP to reach out to social sections that constitute the strength of the Lalu-Nitish combine. Nityanand's appointment and his efforts to put in place the new team is part of the broader strategy to make inroads in fresh areas."

The observations of Tiwary, who is also a professor of Sanskrit at a Dumka college, give a hint about the strategy behind installing Nityanand as state party chief. .