New Delhi: BJP president J P Nadda on Thursday (October 7) reconstituted the new National Executive Committee, the party's important policymaking body.
The new entrants to the party Dinesh Trivedi, actor Mithun Chakraborty and Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, have been included. There are the names of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and veterans L K Advani, M M Joshi and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. India's second career diplomat-turned-External Affairs Minister, Dr S Jaishankar, is also in the esteemed panel.
However, the top 80-member party panel does not have the likes of Maneka Gandhi, Varun Gandhi and Chaudhary Birender Singh.
Among others, it has the likes of Nitin Gadkari and two former Ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar.
From the northeast, there is no representative from Nagaland in the main panel. The saffron party is in power in coalition with the NNDP in the state. Some developments in the Nagaland unit of the saffron party lately have not been to the liking and pleasure of the party's central leadership.
Reportedly, the state unit bosses, including party president Temjan Imna Along and Deputy Chief Minister Y Patton, were pulled up on certain 'state-level' issues last month. However, Patton will be part of the team, along with deputy chief ministers from other states. The Naga peace talks have also progressed quite fast in the meantime.
However, the National Executive has representatives from Arunachal Pradesh – Kiren Rijiju (Law Minister) and senior leader Bijoya Chakravarty from Assam. It also has legislator A L Hek from Meghalaya and Union Minister Pratima Bhowmick from Tripura.
Besides 80 regular members, the executive will also have 50 special invitees and 179 permanent invitees. In the new team, 37 of the 80 members are Union Ministers, and several ministers from the state are part of the committee.
Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia also finds a place and the new IT Minister Ashwini Vaishaw from Odisha.
Rajya Sabha MP Dr Subramanian Swamy also has been dropped.
BJP MLA in Uttar Pradesh assembly Rajesh Agarwal is the treasurer and Madhya Pradesh MP Sudhir Gupta is the national joint treasurer. Union Minister B. L. Verma has been inducted as a special invitee.
Among the 80 members in the national executive, 12 (including Mr Modi) are from Uttar Pradesh, and there are six special invitees also from the poll-bound state.
Bharati Ghosh and Swapan Dasgupta have been accommodated from From West Bengal. Interestingly, many of them make it from Delhi – Meenakshi Lekhi, Dr Harsh Vardhan, Manoj Tiwari and Ramesh Bidhuri.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, RD Minister Giriraj Singh, I & B Minister Anurag Thakur and new Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya are also in the key party panel.
