NEW DELHI: Cracking whip against dissenters, the BJP on Thursday showed the doors to MP Varun Gandhi and former Union ministers Maneka Gandhi and Choudhary Birendra Singh from its national executive.
The 80-member national executive consists of a large number of Union Ministers, besides accommodating electorally influential leaders who joined the party in the recent years, including Mithun Chakraborty and Dinesh Trivedi.
The BJP will hold its first national executive council in Delhi on November 7, the first in over two years. The election of BJP chief J P Nadda is yet to be endorsed by the national council of the party as per rules. MP Varun Gandhi, who has been vocal in solidarity with the farmers agitating against the contentious farm laws along with his mother Maneka Gandhi, were dropped from the top panel.
In a series of tweets, Varun Gandhi condemned the Lakhimpur Kheri violence in which eight people were crushed to death by a speeding car that belonged to MoS for Home Ajay Mishra's son.
Former Union minister Choudhary Birendra Singh, who headed the Ministry of Rural Development in the first tenure of the NDA government, too was shown the exit. Singh had recently shared dais with the INLD leader Om Prakash Choutala against the farm laws. Former Union minister and the BJP MP from Damoh, Madhya Pradesh, Prahlad Singh Patel, whose name purportedly had popped in the Pegasus list, was also dropped. Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy had engaged in a tug of war with BJP’s IT department head of the party Amit Malviya, too was shown the door.
The notable inclusion in the national executive was of the Union minister of state for law and justice S P S Baghel and Dara Singh Chouhan, both imports from the BSP. The two are known to have strong following among the extremely backward castes in the poll bound Uttar Pradesh.
The national executive seemingly also sent out a message to the faction leaders in the BJP as the party leadership dropped Ashok Parnami, former Rajasthan unit chief and loyalist of former CM Vasundhara Raje, while her son Dushyant Singh was also removed from the coveted club. The son of the former UP chief minister Kalyan Singh and the Lok Sabha MP Rajbeerr Singh too was dropped along with former Union minister Mahesh Sharma.
Former MPs Vinay Katiyar, Vijay Goyal and Suresh Prabhu who have been phased out from active politics also missed out from the national executive, which included BJP ex-vice president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe.