Smriti Irani dropped from BJP's National Executive body

Bharatiya Janata Party’s president Amit Shah finalised the party’s 111-member national executive on Thursday, which includes top party leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former prime minister A B Vajpayee besides a host of top party leaders.

However, Human Resources Development minister Smriti Irani and minority affairs minister Najma Heptulla are among the prominent faces whom BJP chief Amit Shah dropped from party’s national executive announced on Thursday.

Hema Malini and Shaina NC have also been omitted from the group. The 111-member group comprises of only eight women after the rejig. 

All the eight chief ministers of BJP-ruled states and two deputy chief ministers, including that in Jammu and Kashmir where the party shares power with PDP, besides 24 former chief ministers and three former deputy chief ministers are permanent invitees to the national executive.

The BJP chief has also made 40 senior leaders from across the country special invitees to the national executive.

The new list comes ahead of the party’s national executive meeting and party’s restructuring by Shah. 

Among those who are part of the new national body include party veterans L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, besides union ministers Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, M Venkaiah Naidu, Nitin Gadkari, Ananth Kumar, Thawarchand Gehlot, Jagat Prakash Nadda, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Kalraj Mishra, Narendra Singh Tomar, Harsh Vardhan, Bandaru Dattatreya and Radha Mohan Singh.

Others include Yashwant Sinha, Vinay Katiyar, C P Thakur, Jual Oram, S S Ahluwalia, Vijay K Malhotra, besides Hukumdev Narayan Singh, L Ganeshan, Lalji Tandon, O Rajgopal, Tathagat Roy, Gulab Chand Katariya and Subramanyam Swami.

Young ministers Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Dharmendra Pradhan, Rajeev Pratap Rudy, Prakash Javadekar, (Gen) V K Singh, Suresh Prabhu, Birendra Singh, Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman are also part of the new executive.

Other leaders like Varun Gandhi, Tapir Gaon, Vijay Goyal Satpal Maharaj, Vishnubhushan Harichandan, Vijay Mahapatra and P K Krishna Das, V Shanmughanathan, are also its members.

Party’s firebrand leaders like Yogi Adityanath and Navjot Singh Sidhu are part of the executive, while another such leader Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti is a special invitee.

All the BJP chief ministers Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Raman Singh, Vasundhra Raje Scindia, Anandiben Patel, Raghuvar Das, Devendra Gandadharrao Fadnavis, Manohar Lal Khattar and Laxmikant Parsekar, besides deputy Chief Ministers Fracesco De D'souza and Nirmal Singh are also invitees.

Besides, all Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council party leaders, state presidents of all states, all general secretaries (organisation) will be special invitees in National Executive.

The first meeting of the new national executive is expected in the first week of April in Bangalore.

For the full list, click HERE

-- With inputs from Agencies