The BJP leadership formed a new BJP Parliamentary Board yesterday after several posts were vacant for a long time. The 11-member committee includes President J. P. Nadda, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, and party’s National General Secretary (Organization) BL Santhosh as before, but Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari and Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan are excluded. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath did not get a seat.
New inclusions
Instead, the notable inclusion in the new committee is B. S. Yediyurappa and Sarbananda Sonowal, two former Chief Ministers of Karnataka and Assam respectively. Yesterday BJP announced the list of members of the Central Election Committee like the Parliamentary Board. Maharashtra Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis has garnered a place.
Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Ananth Kumar’s death, Venkaiah Naidu’s election as Vice President, and Thawar Chand Gehlot’s decision to make Karnataka Governor left five posts of the Parliamentary Board vacant for a long time. Recently, J. P. Nadda informed close circles about the formation of a new parliamentary board. Yesterday, the party’s parliamentary board and central election committee were reshuffled. In BJP, the party’s Parliamentary Board is the supreme committee for taking any decisions of the party.
Role of the parliamentary board
The Parliamentary Board decides who will sit as the Chief Minister of the state, state president, or other top posts of the party. The BJP said that the two committees have been formed keeping in mind the upcoming dozen assembly elections and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Gadkari and Chouhan were excluded from the parliamentary board announced yesterday. Adityanath also did not get a place. According to BJP sources, the way Yogi has led the party to victory in Uttar Pradesh twice in a row, his place in the parliamentary board was assumed to be assured. But it didn’t happen. According to many in politics, all three – Yogi, Nitin, and Shivraj – have full merit to become the prime contenders for the prime ministership in 2029 after the end of the Narendra Modi era. Besides, three people have a Sangh Parivar relationship.
Many say that the strategy to keep those three leaders powerless is to ensure that the Gujarat camp remains dominant in the BJP even after Modi’s retirement. For that, on the one hand, as it was decided not to include a Chief Minister in the Parliamentary Board Committee, the strategy of exclusion was taken in Gadkari. However, a section of the party says that usually the former presidents always get a place in the parliamentary committee. Questions have been raised as to why Gadkari was left out.
Sikh Samaj BJP leader Iqbal Singh Lalpura got a place on the parliamentary board this time. The BJP leadership is worried about the poor result of the protest in Punjab over the agriculture law in the assembly in that state. So the party has decided to include Lalpura to get good results in the upcoming Lok Sabha.