Yediyurappa, Sonowal inducted in BJP parliamentary board, Gadkari dropped

NEW DELHI: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president JP Nadda on Wednesday revamped the party’s parliamentary board, inducting former Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa, union minister Sarbananda Sonowal and former minister Satyanarayan Jatiya into the BJP’s apex decision-making body.

Union minister and former BJP president Nitin Gadkari and Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan have been dropped from the board. Chouhan was the last BJP leader to be inducted into the party’s top panel in August 2014 when the then president, Amit Shah reconstituted the parliamentary board.

The move to reconfigure the parliamentary board was expected, particularly in view of the five vacancies in the 11-member body that arose over the years starting from 2017 when board member M Venkaiah Naidu was elevated as the country’s Vice President. There were more vacancies due to the passing away of three key party leaders over the following two years: Ananth Kumar in 2018, and Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj in 2019.

Apart from Yediyurappa and Sonowal, the revamped 11-member board now has Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, BJP chief JP Nadda, Union defence minister Rajnath Singh, Other Backward Classes (OBC) morcha president K Laxman, National Commission for Minorities chairman Iqbal Singh Lalpura, former BJP vice president Sudha Yadav, and former minister Satyanarayan Jatiya.

The parliamentary board has the power to supervise and regulate activities of the legislative and parliamentary units of the party, guide the formation of ministries and regulate all organisations units below the national executive. It also has the powers to take note of any breach of discipline by members, office bearers of state units and take necessary action.

Nadda also re-constituted the central election committee of the party. The 15-member board now includes PM Modi, JP Nadda, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Sarbananda Sonowal, BS Yediyurappa, K Laxman, Iqbal Singh Lalpura, Sudha Yadav, Om Mathur, BL Santhosh, Satyanarayan Jatiya, Bhupendra Yadav, Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and BJP women wing chief Vanathi Srinivasan.

Former union ministers Jual Oram and Shahnawaz Hussain are no longer members of the central election committee.