New Delhi, The BJP on Thursday dropped party leader Varun Gandhi, and Maneka Gandhi from its National Executive Committee, a key decision making body of the party, hours after the Pilibhit MP demanded justice for the victims of Lakhimpur.
The national executive of the party, which was announced after a long wait, included Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and veterans LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi along with others.
Varun Gandhi, who had been urging the government to talk to the farmers, had tweeted on Thursday demanding “accountability for the innocent blood of farmers”, and posted a video of the incident.
“The video is crystal clear. Protestors cannot be silenced through murder. There has to be accountability for the innocent blood of farmers that has been spilled and justice must be delivered before a message of arrogance and cruelty enters the minds of every farmer," he said in a tweet.
On October 4, Varun Gandhi had written a letter to the UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and demanded a CBI inquiry under the Supreme Court's supervision.
Former union minister Birender Singh, and Minister of State Rao Inderjit Singh, who has also been critical of the government's handling of the Farmers' agitation, were also dropped.
Others who were dropped included union minister Prahlad Patel, Subramanian Swamy, Suresh Prabhu, former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje's son Dushyant Singh, Vijay Goel, Vinay Katiyar and S S Ahluwalia.
Former party presidents and union ministers Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah and Nitin Gadkari are also in the national executive.
Other members in the list include floor leader in Rajya Sabha and union minister Piyush Goyal, and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Smriti Irani, who was dropped out of the committee when Amit Shah announced his team in 2018 made a re-entry.
Union Ministers Jyotiradiya Scindia, S Jaishankar, Meenakshi Lekhi, Anurag Thakur and Ashwani Vaishnaw are also among the new entries in the committee.
Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of national executive members with 13 leaders from the state in the list, including the Prime Minister, who is an MP from Varanasi.
Former Union ministers like Harsh Vardhan, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar also found a place on the list. Former DMRC managing director E Sreedharan is among the special invitees.
Besides regular members, the executive will have 50 special invitees and 179 permanent invitees including chief ministers, deputy chief ministers of BJP ruled states, leaders of the legislative assemblies and state presidents among others.. This is the first list of the party's national executive that has been released after Nadda took over as the party president. A meeting of the national executive may be held on November 7, party sources said.
The national executive is a body of the top leaders of the party which is crucial to the decision making process in the party, including the election of the party president.
The last meeting of the national executive of the party was held in January 2019. The BJP’s constitution says, National Executive and State Executive should meet once every three months.