Nitin Gadkari and Shivraj Singh Chouhan were on Wednesday dropped from the BJP’s highest decision-making body, while former chief ministers BS Yediyurappa and Sarbananda Sonowal were included in the list.
The BJP parliamentary board list includes JP Nadda, Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, K Laxman, Iqbal Singh Lalpura, Sudha Yadav, Satyanarayan Jatiya and BL Santosh. The party also released a list of members of the BJP Central Election Committee (CEC) which included Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
Fadnavis and K Laxman are two important names in the list, pointing to promotions for leaders. While BJP OBC Morcha national president Laxman is trying to gain base in Telangana, Fadnavis played a major role in forging an alliance with the Eknath Shinde camp, which led to the fall of the Uddhav Thackeray government.
While talking, Laxman said, “People in South India are looking up to PM Modi for development works, and I will raise his voice in my state.”
The party has tried to consider diversity while changing the board. “Obviously there is an emphasis on diversity. Sarbananda Sonowal is from the northeast, L Laxman and BS Yediyurappa are from the south, and Iqbal Singh Lalpura is a Sikh,” said sources.
Sudha Yadav is a self-made political leader whose husband was martyred in Kargil. Sources said that their joining shows the highest respect towards women and families of the armed forces. He further said that the board shows how BJP rewards old workers and values the experience of its workers.
BJP sources said, “People like BSY, Satya Narayan Jatiya, K Laxman have given their lives by building the party brick by brick from the very beginning.”
The Parliamentary Board is the governing body of the Bharatiya Janata Party which takes day-to-day decisions on behalf of the National Executive. The National Executive, consisting of the party president and ten other members, establishes the highest decision-making body. The board oversees the activities of the party’s parliamentary and legislative groups. It also guides and regulates all the organizational units below the National Executive.