From the BJP’s top decision-making body, the parliamentary board, the party on Wednesday dropped its former President and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari along with Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and brought in six new faces including former Karnataka CM B S Yediyurappa and Iqbal Singh Lalpura, a Sikh, as a minority representative as opposed to the earlier practice of having a Muslim representative like Shahnawaz Hussein.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP President J. P. Nadda remain the only constant constituents of the parliamentary board and the central election committee which performs the critical task of approving candidates for all assembly and parliamentary elections.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is a member of both of these important bodies. Interestingly, second-term CM of Uttar Pradesh and arguably the second most popular mass leader in the BJP after the PM, Yogi Adityanath, did not find a place in any of these two top decision-making bodies of the party.
Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, K Laxman, Sudha Yadav and Satyanarayan Jatiya are the other new members of the BJP’s apex organisational body—an attempt by the party to make the parliamentary board more socially and regionally representative.
In fact, Lalpura will be the first Sikh to have a seat in the BJP parliamentary board.
The central election committee also included former Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Union Minister Bhupender Yadav, Om Mathur and its women wing chief Vanathi Srinivasan.
Former Union minister Shahnawaz Hussain and Jual Oram have been dropped from the CEC, whose members also include all parliamentary board members