BJP releases 80-member National Executive list; Maneka, Varun Gandhi dropped

The executive is a key deliberative body of the party which meets to discuss key issues facing the government and shapes the organisation's agenda

BJP President J P Nadda on Thursday announced an 80-member National Executive Committee with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, veterans L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi as members and excluded critics such as Subramanian Swamy, Maneka Gandhi and Varun Gandhi.

Senior leaders Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal found a place in the 80-member Committee, which is set to meet here on November 7.

The Committee will also have 50 special invitees and 179 permanent invitees which include leaders of legislative parties, current and former chief ministers and deputy chief ministers, national spokespersons, frontal organisations presidents, state in-charges and co-in charges, state presidents, state general secretaries (organisation) and sanghataks.

Also Read | Varun Gandhi takes divergent stand from BJP on farmers' issue

Besides the mother-son Gandhi duo and Swamy, senior leaders Vinay Katiyar, C P Thakur, Vijay Goel, Sheshadri Chari, Tarun Vijay, Prahlad Singh Patel, Hukumdev Narayan Yadav have been dropped from the Committee.

Varun Gandhi, a three-term Lok Sabha member, has been critical of the BJP government's handling of the farmers' protests, while his mother Maneka was dropped from the Council of Ministers after Modi's re-election in 2019.

Lateral entrants into the BJP – External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, Mithun Chakraborty, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Dinesh Trivedi find a place in the 80-member committee.

The 80-member Committee has 14 women members that include veteran Bijoya Chakraborty, Smriti Irani, Nirmala Sithraman, Meenakshi Lekhi, Darakhshan Andrabi, Chitra Kishor Wagh.

Goa Health Minister Vishwajeet Rane, who has been in a power-tussle with Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, has been named as a special invitee to the Committee.

Former Delhi Metro chief E Sreedharan and lateral entrants Khusbu Sundar, Vijayashanti, Eatala Rajendra have found a place as special invitees to the committee.

Senior leaders Prakash Javadekar, Ravishankar Prasad, Santosh Gangwar who were dropped from the Council of Ministers in July also found a place in the Committee.

Sithraman and Pralhad Joshi represent Karnataka in the 80-member Committee, while Kalaburgi Lok Sabha member Umesh Jadhav has been made a special invitee.

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