Lucknow, Sep 15 : Uttar Pradesh BJP President Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary on Friday released a list of 98 district presidents, effecting changes in 71 per cent of the district units. Among the six regions of the party, the BJP has changed 17 district presidents in western UP, 13 in Kanpur region, 10 each in Braj, Kashi, and Awadh regions, and nine in Gorakhpur region. In Mau district, where the BJP recently lost the Ghosi Assembly bypoll, the party has changed its district president. In place of outgoing president Praveen Gupta, the BJP has appointed Nupur Agarwal. Significantly, the district presidents of high-profile districts, including Varanasi and Gorakhpur, have been retained in their positions. Varanasi is the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Gorakhpur is the home turf of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. In Varanasi, Vidyasagar Rai has been retained as the mahanagar president whereas Hansraj Vishwakarma will continue as the president of the zila unit. Likewise, in Gorakhpur, Rajesh Gupta will continue as the mahanagar president and Yudhishthir Singh has been retained as the president of the zila unit. Maximum changes have been made in western UP where the party has 19 district units and the presidents of 17 of them have been changed. Two district presidents who were retained in western UP are in Ghaziabad and Saharanpur. In Ayodhya, Kamlesh Srivastava has replaced Abhishek Mishra. In Ayodhya district, the party has retained Sanjeev Singh as the district president. The appointment of the district presidents was due since the past six months. The party had sent observers to every district to finalise the names of the district presidents. /IANS