BJP chief J.P. Nadda has re-constituted the national executive body of the party including several new and younger members, while dropping several high profile names.
Among those dropped include Subramanian Swamy, Maneka Gandhi, Varun Gandhi, Vinay Katiyar, C.P. Thakur, Vijay Goyal, S.S. Ahluwalia, V.K. Malhotra, Suresh Prabhu, Sheshadari Chari, O. Rajagopal, Dr Mahesh Sharma, Tarun Vijay, Shrikant Sharma, Siddharthnath Singh, MJ Akbar and Birender Singh
Some of the dropped members like Swamy, Varun and Birender Singh were seen to be diverging from the party line particularly on the issue of the farmers.
The newly constituted national executive has 80 members including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, L.K. Advani, M.M. Joshi, both former party chiefs, Union ministers, Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari and Piyush Goyal. It has retained leaders like Nirmala Sitharaman and Dharmendra Pradhan.
The national executive also has 50 special invitees and 179 permanent invitees (ex-officio) which include CMs deputy CMs, former CMs and former deputy CMs, party national officer bearers, state presidents, in-charges of state and various morchas.
Among the new inclusions are Union ministers S. Jaishankar, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Hardeep Puri, Smriti Irani, Bhupender Yadav, Meenakshi Lekhi and Anurag Thakur. The new members have been picked up keeping in mind the state wise representation including those who have recently joined the party or have been instrumental in managing the party affairs.
Some other key inclusions are Swami Prasad Maurya, Brijesh Pathak, Dinesh Trivedi, Mithun Chakravarti, Swapan Dasgupta, Bharati Ghosh, Anirban Ganguly, Mukut Mani Adhikari, V. Muraleedharan, K. Rajashekhran and Darakshan Andrabi.
Among the special invitees are metroman E. Shreedharan, P.K. Ksrishnadas, Kushbu Sundar, Vijayshanti, Ashok Lahiri, Rupa Ganguly, Debashree Chaudhuri and Mazufa Khatun.
By including new names in the national executive, BJP has tried to bring in younger leaders, new faces, and broad representation to different castes and communities. After the constitution of the national executive, the BJP may take a decision on holding the national executive meeting which has not been held for the past two years.