NEW DELHI: Desperate to present a winning team after a string of electoral setbacks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party removed actress Hema Malini and party hopper Najma Heptullah from its apex body. It included movie actors Shatrughan Sinha and Vinod Khanna together with former cricketer Navjot Singh Siddhu in the new team.

Keen not to rock the boat with further youthful adventurism, the BJP underscored the presence of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and two other old warhorses Lal Kishan Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi to lead the BJP into its future forays. The octogenarian Mr Vajpayee has not been seen in public for years and is believed to be suffering from complications that come with age.

The BJP was routed in recent Delhi assembly polls and fell short of its ambition to lead an elected government in Jammu and Kashmir. Elections in Bihar will be a challenge with a resurgent combination of lower and middle caste alliances taking form against Mr Modi’s waning popularity.

The Hindu said that after more than nine months of the BJP government being in office, party President Amit Shah on Thursday re-jigged the party’s National Executive raising the number of members from the earlier 75 to 111.

The first meeting of the new panel is expected to be in Bangalore in April.

Among the top party leaders included in the new executive are Messrs Vajpayee, Advani and Joshi toegther with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Venkaiah Naidu, Nitin Gadkari and Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Among the new entrants are Union Ministers Ananth Kumar, Thawarchand Gehlot, J.P. Nadda, Harshvardhan, Dharmendra Pradhan, Prakash Javadekar, Radha Mohan Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, Kiran Rijaju and Mahesh Chandra Sharma. S.S. Ahluwalia, Subramaniyam Swami, Yogi Adityanath and Sadhvi Niranjan have also been included in the national executive besides the mother-son duo of Menaka Gandhi and Varun Gandhi.

All the eight chief ministers of BJP-ruled states, two deputy chief ministers, 14 former chief ministers and three ex-deputy chief ministers shall be permanent invitees to the meetings of the National Executive.

In a major re-shuffle, the BJP President has moved three members from the national executive to the list of 40-member Special Invitees and dropped 10 members.

Besides, all Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council party leaders, state presidents, all general secretaries (organisation) shall be Special Invites to the National Executive.

Among the notable names dropped from the National Executive who have not been adjusted as a Permanent or Special Invitee are Union Minister Najma Heptulla, Mathura MP Hema Malini, lawyer Pinki Anand, N.C. Saina, and Ramdas Agarwal.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2015

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