Drakshan, Jitendra find place from J&K, Priya, Mir as Spl invitees
New Delhi, Oct. 07:
BJP on Thursday constituted a new national executive committee with 80 members, dropping few prominent leaders – Varun Gandhi, Subramaniam Swamy, former union minister Chaudhary Birender Singh and others.
The National President of BJP, Jagat Prakash Nadda has announced the members of the National Executive Committee, Special Invitees to National Executive and Permanent Invitees (ex officio) appointed on Thursday.
The National Executive Committee has 80 members including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Senior leaders Lal Krishna Advani and Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, Ex-National Presidents and Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah and Nitin Gadkari, floor leader in Rajya Sabha and Union Minister Piyush Goyal and National Office bearers.
The National Executive Committee will also have 50 Special Invitees and 179 Permanent Invitees (ex officio) which includes Chief Ministers, Deputy Chief Ministers, Leader of the legislative party in Assemblies and Councils, Ex-Chief Ministers and Ex-Deputy Chief Ministers, National Spokespersons, National Morcha Presidents, State Prabharis/Sah-Prabharis, State Presidents, State General Secretaries (Organisation) and Sanghathaks.
Avinash Rai Khanna, BJP’s national vice president and prominent leader from Punjab has been dropped as vice president position while he remained state Prabhari (incharge) of Himachal Pradesh. Khanna was state incharge of Jammu Kashmir for many years till recently before the BJP national general secretary Tarun Chugh took over. From Jammu Kashmir, Dr. Drakhshan Andrabi and Jitendra Singh got place in NEC while Priya Sethi and Ghulam Mohammad Mir are special invitees. Ashok Koul, Ravinder Raina will participate being state General Secretary (Organisation), State President while Dr. Nirmal Singh and Kavinder Gupta as former Deputy Chief Ministers.
Lok Sabha members Maneka Gandhi and her son, Varun Gandhi, were dropped from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s national executive, while Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Jyotiraditya Scindia were among those inducted into the 80-member decision-making body that was announced on Thursday.
Hours after BJP MP Varun Gandhi condemned the incident in Lakhimpur Kheri, in which a Union Minister’s convoy allegedly ran over and killed four protesting farmers, his name was left out of the party’s new national executive committee. His mother, Maneka Gandhi, too, was excluded from the list of names announced by BJP president JP Nadda on Thursday.
Among the national executive members dropped by Mr. Nadda are former Union Ministers Dr. Mahesh Sharma, Vijay Goel and Dr. C.P. Thakur; current Union Ministers Rao Inderjit Singh, Ashwani Kumar Choubey and Prahlad Singh Patel; Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy and former union minister Chaudhary Birender Singh.
Some new entrants to the party have been included in the national executive, including Mr. Scindia and Dinesh Trivedi, a former Trinamool Congress MP who joined the BJP in the run-up to the West Bengal Assembly elections earlier this year. Prominent BJP campaigners and candidates in the Bengal polls like actor Mithun Chakraborty and MP Swapan Dasgupta have also been included in the national executive.
Union Ministers G.Kishan Reddy, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Hardeep Singh Puri, V. Muraleedharan, Bhupender Yadav, Anurag Thakur, Meenakshi Lekhi and S. Jaishankar are among those in the national executive.
Since Mr. Nadda took over as party president in January 2020, this was the first appointment of the national executive by him. According to sources, a meeting of the national executive, which was last held in 2019 during Mr. Shah’s tenure as party president could be held on November 7.
