Smriti Irani dropped from BJP’s new 111-member all-powerful national executive body

Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Najma Heptuallah and film-star-turned MP Hema Malini were today dropped from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) National Executive as party President Amit Shah reconstituted one of the top party panels inducting new entrants Suresh Prabhu and Virendra Singh, who are also ministers at the Centre.
Amit Shah has retained all top leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and senior ministers Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Venkaiah Naidu as Members.
Ministers V K Singh, Rao Inderjeet Singh and Subramanian Swamy were included as Members in the 178-member National Executive that is likely to meet in the first week of April in Bengaluru.While Rural Development Birender Singh had quit the Congress and joined Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) before the Haryana Assembly elections late last year, Inderjeet Singh, a minister in the Manmohan Singh government, had deserted Congress to join BJP Congress before the Lok Sabha elections. The former army chief had also joined the party before the Parliamentary polls.
In constituting the National Executive, Shah has named 111 members, including most of the union ministers and prominent party leaders in the states.
All state Chief Ministers, deputy Chief Ministers and those who had held these offices were among the 27 made Permanent Invitees and while 40 Special Invitees were inducted.
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 have been made permanent invitees to the executive.
Among some of the other omissions in the new list include those who have become Governors or those like Jaswant Singh, who was expelled from the party. The former Defence Minister’s son Manvendra Singh has also been excluded from the new national executive.
Among those who are part of the new national body include Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari, Ananth Kumar, Thawarchand Gehlot, Jagat P Nadda, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Kalraj Mishra, Narendra Singh Tomar, Harsh Vardhan, Bandaru Dattatreya and Radha Mohan Singh.
Other prominent leaders inducted include Yashwant Sinha, Vinay Katiyar, C P Thakur, Jual Oram, S S Ahluwalia, Vijay K Malhotra, besides Hukumdev Narayan Singh, L Ganesan, Lalji Tandon, O Rajgopal, Tathagat Roy and Gulab Chand Katariya.
Senior BJP leaders Sumitra Mahajan, who has since become Lok Sabha Speaker, have been excluded from the new executive.
Among some of the prominent names included in the Executive include Dushyant Singh, son of Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje, while cine star Suresh Oberoi and former cricketer-turned-politician Chetan Chauhan have been included as special invitees.
Others included are leaders from Bihar Rameshwar Chaurasiya, former Delhi mayor Aarti Mehra,former union minister Harmohan Dhawan from Chandigarh.Among some of the prominent leaders who have been dropped by Shah in the include Satyanarayan Jatiya, Ramen Deka, Maya Singh and Ashok Pradhan.
Some others excluded are Arun Singh, who is related to Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Sidharth Nath Singh, Nalin Kohli and Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, who are office bearers, and Shaina N C, a prominent Mumbai designer.
Delhi BJP leaders Jagdish Mukhi, Vijay Jolly and Ramesh Bidhuri have also been excluded from the new executive.
Rajya Sabha MP and businessman Ajai Sancheti and Lalita Kumar Manglam, who has now become Chairperson of National Commission for women, have also been excluded.
Former Punjab Ministers Manoranjan Kalia and Tikshan Sood have also been excluded from Shah’s new executive.
Young ministers Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Dharmendra Pradhan, Rajeev Pratap Rudy, Prakash Javadekar, (Gen) V K Singh, Suresh Prabhu, Birendra Singh, Piyush Goyal, Pon Radhakrishnan and Mahesh Sharma and Nirmala Sitharaman form 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.
Firebrand leaders Yogi Adityanath and Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti find place in the executive as Member and Special Invitee respectively. Navjot Singh Sidhu remains part of the Executive.
Besides, all leaders of the party in Legislative Assemblies and Councils in the states, all state presidents all General Secretaries (Organisation) will be special invitees in the National Executive.
The previous National Executive during former President Rajnath Singh’s time consisted of 216 members in all.