The BJP held its second parliamentary board meeting in a week. What’s this all-powerful panel of which Karnataka leader BS Yediyurappa is a member but UP CM Yogi Adityanath is not?
The BJP’s Parliamentary Board meeting was held in New Delhi on Tuesday. It was the second board meeting of the party in a week.
The meetings of the top decision-making of the party assume importance against the backdrop of just-concluded assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh as well as the polls scheduled in many states next year.
The meeting was called to discuss the poll strategy and agenda.
WHAT IS ITS ROLE?
All the members, mostly 11, of the board are appointed by the BJP chief.
The board is the governing body of the BJP which takes day-to-day decisions on behalf of the National Executive.
The board supervises the activities of the parliamentary and legislative groups of the party. It monitors the organisational units below the National Executive and suggests ways to improve their performance.
The board is entrusted with the responsibility to pick CM faces ahead of elections. It decides who has to be promoted, who to be given additional responsibilities and who to be shifted. It also takes the decision on ticket distribution before polls. The board members are also an integral part of the BJP central election committee.
The board members can amend, add or delete provisions to the party’s constitution.
In August this year, the BJP restructured its parliamentary board after eight years and inducted new members. Former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa was included in the board, while Union minister Nitin Gadkari and Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan were dropped.
Along with Yediyurappa, the other new faces in the board were Sarbananda Sonowal, ex-Assam CM and prominent tribal leader; Sudha Yadav, a former Haryana MP; K Laxman, Telangana OBC face; Iqbal Singh Lalpura, minorities panel chief and Satyanarayan Jatia, a Dalit, labour leader and poet.
The other members in the board are Jagat Prakash Nadda, BJP National President; Narendra Modi, Prime Minister; Rajnath Singh, Cabinet Minister; Amit Shah, Cabinet Minister and BL Santhosh, National General Secretary (Organisation).
A senior BJP leader had reportedly said: “Party chief (Nadda) has changed the parameters while reconstituting the board. He has aimed to make it more inclusive, representing experience and the symbolism of caste.”
YEDIYURAPPA’S INDUCTION
Lingayat strongman Yediyurappa’s induction came after there were talks that the former Karnataka CM was being cold-shouldered by the party. The robust support base of Lingayats worked in Yediyurappa’s favour and all rumours of his alienation from the party were quashed.
The 79-year-old has already announced that his younger son BY Vijayendra will replace him and contest from the Shikaripura Assembly constituency in the Shimogga district in the Karnataka elections next year. His elder son BY Raghavendra is a BJP Lok Sabha MP.
On August 4, Amit Shah met Yediyurappa to discuss the agenda of the 2023 Assembly polls while he was on a visit to Bengaluru. It then became apparent that the Karnataka BJP heavyweight will be given a prominent position. Despite simmering differences with him, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai hailed his inclusion in the central parliamentary board.
The BJP has high stakes in the approaching Karnataka polls, and Yediyurappa’s elevation is seen as a step to prevent him from drifting away from the party. The elevation was also a strategy to offer balm the rancour that he harboured after being removed from the CM’s post.
Currently, there is no chief minister on the board. Speculation was rife that Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath would be inducted. But that was not to be. His exclusion raised many hackles. Yogi himself remained quiet over the matter. Chouhan too was dropped.
It was in 2014 that the last parliamentary board list was drawn. Then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi was inducted in the board, which was a sign that the party was looking for a bigger role for him. The rest is history.
Yogi’s popularity and power has been growing since he formed a BJP government in 2017 in the largest state of India. He repeated the feat in 2022, which no other CM could in the last 36 years. He may have not been given a berth on the board, but that doesn’t reduce him just to a CM.
