The other members of the newly-formed board are Sarbananda Sonowal, K Laxman, Iqbal Singh Lalpura, Sudha Yadav and Satyanarayan Jatiya.
New Delhi: In a major organisational rejig, the BJP Wednesday inducted Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and B S Yediyurappa into the party’s parliamentary board — the highest decision-making body.
While three names — Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and J P Nadda — are constant, what came as a shock was the exclusion of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
The other members of the newly-formed board are Sarbananda Sonowal, K Laxman, Iqbal Singh Lalpura, Sudha Yadav and Satyanarayan Jatiya. The parliamentary board of the party has the power to decide on chief ministers, state presidents and other key positions.
Gadkari, who is close to the ideological mentor of BJP — Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh — had managed to stay in the top body despite slamming the government on several occasions. And BJP has traditionally kept its former presidents in the parliamentary board. The exclusion of Shivraj Singh Chouhan is also a shocker as the man has remained the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh for 20 years.
Among the big names, former Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was also inducted in the board, possibly as a reward for making way for Himanta Biswa Sarma. The same might have been the reason behind inducting Devendra Fadnavis who made way for Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde for the chief minister’s post.
Among the new faces, Sudha Yadav, 57, is a former MP from Haryana’s Mahendragarh and a national secretary. Yadav’s husband, Deputy Commandant Sukhbir Singh Yadav of the Border Security Force, died in the Kargil War. After his death, Yadav, a lecturer and mother of two, was fielded by the BJP as its candidate against Congress stalwart Rao Inderjit Singh from Mahendragarh in 1999.
