The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday appointed former Aligarh Muslim University Vice Chancellor Tariq Mansoor as its vice president.

Mansoor was among the 13 vice presidents appointed by the BJP. The party also appointed nine general secretaries and 13 secretaries. Among the new secretaries is Anil Antony, the son of Congress leader AK Antony, who had joined the BJP in April.

The rejig in the saffron party comes ahead of the upcoming Assembly polls in five states and the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.

Mansoor had resigned as vice chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University in April after he was nominated by the BJP to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council.

In December 2019, Mansoor had faced strong criticism after he had called the police at the university campus to quell protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and police violence at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia.

A fact-finding report on the violence had found that law-enforcement officials fired stun grenades, “usually used in war-like situations or terror operations”, at students and raised “chilling slogans like Jai Shri Ram while attacking the students and setting ablaze their scooters and vehicles...”. The report had said that the university administration not only failed in their duty to protect the campus and its residents against “brutality by the Uttar Pradesh Police, but also that they in fact invited the police forces and their weapons into the campus”.