Varun Gandhi, Maneka, Chaudhary Birendra Singh, Ahluwalia out of new BJP National Executive

Though JP Nadda took over as working president on June 17, 2019 and was duly electede to the top post on January 20, 2020, the new national executive had not been constituted till now. The party gave Covid pandemic as the reason for the delay as a national executive meeting has to be convened soon after the announcement. However, the general perception was that there is no unanimity on the names and the party did not want to ruffle feathers before crucial Assembly elections.

Names of 50 special invitees and 179 permanent invitees (ex-officio) to the national executive were also announced. BJP is likely to hold its national executive meeting on November 7-8 in the national capital, sources said.

Party veterans LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi will continue to be members of the national executive.

Maneka Gandhi and son Varun had been members of the BJP national executive for several years and this is the first time the two have been dropped. In 2019, when Narendra Modi took over as Prime Minister for the second consecutive term, neither of the two were made ministers. Varun has been tweeting in favour of the farmers protesting against the three farm laws. He has also vociferously condemned the Lakhimpur Kheri incident and demanded that those responsible for running over their SUVs over four farmers should be tried for murder.

Chaudhary Birendra Singh, who was Steel Minister in the previous Modi government, has also not been included in the new national executive. His son and former bureaucrat Brijendra Singh is MP from Hissar, Haryana.

Ram Madhav and Murleedhar Rao, who were general secretaries during the tenure of Amit Shah as party chief, have not been given a place in the national executive. Subramanian Swamy, who had opposed the Covid vaccination drive and- like Varun- taken a stand on several issues that was opposed to the government- has also been dropped.

Bardhaman-Durgapur MP SS Ahluwalia too has not been retained in the national executive this time.

Among the new faces are union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, Mansukh Mandavia, Ashwini Vaishnaw and Anurag Thakur. Smriti Irani, Meenakshi Lekhi, Hardeep Singh Puri, Manoj Tiwari and Swapan Das Gupta have been made members of the national executive. Madhya Pradesh minister Narrotam Mishra, Union Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Virendra Kumar Darakshan Andrabi will be a member from Jammu and Kashmir. Actor Mithun Chakraborty, Anirban Ganguly, Bharati Ghosh and Dinesh Trivedi and Mukutmani Adhikari have been nominated to the national executive from West Bengal.

All national office-bearers also participate in all national executive conclaves.

The list of special invitees includes Tapir Gao, Mangal Pandey, Nand Kishore Yadav, Hema Malini, metro-man E Sreedharan, Khushbu Sundar, Vijayshanti, Ashok Lahiri and Rupa Ganguli.

The permanent invitees (ex-officio) include chief ministers of BJP ruled state, 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 in-charges and co-in-charges, state presidents, state general secretaries (organization) and sangathaks.