Rajnath's new team: Modi, Varun, Shah in; Yashwant out

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi appears set for a bigger role at the national level in the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the next Lok Sabha polls, with the party on Sunday re-inducting him into the Central Parliamentary board, its top decision-making body.

Modi, 62, is the only serving chief minister to be included in the Parliamentary Board by BJP president Rajnath Singh, who announced his new 76-member team on Sunday to steer the party into the next general elections.

Modi comes back to the party's top body after a gap of six years. He was removed from the board by Singh during his previous tenure as party president, ending speculation over the chief minister's future role at the national level in BJP.

Modi, who has been projected by a section within BJP as the party's prime ministerial candidate, has also been included in BJP's Central Election Committee, headed by Singh.

Singh's new team has 12 vice presidents, 10 general secretaries, 15 secretaries and seven spokespersons, besides a 12-member Central Parliamentary Board, a 19-member Central Election Committee and a five-member Central Disciplinary Committee.

Among the new faces in Singh's team are former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharti and Modi's confidant Amit Shah, who have been made vice president and general secretary respectively. Pilibhit Member of Parliament Varun Gandhi has also been elevated as the party's general secretary.

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Party's senior leader and former finance minister Yashwant Sinha has not found a place in Singh's team. Among those who have been dropped include Najma Heptulla, Hema Malini and Shanta Kumar as vice presidents and Vasundhara Raje as general secretary.

Smriti Irani, who is a Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament from Gujarat and considered close to Modi, has also been promoted as vice president.

Former Karnataka chief minister Sadananda Gowda has been given the post of vice president while Rajiv Pratap Rudy has been elevated as the general secretary.

Durg MP Saroj Pandey has been made the new president of BJP Mahila Morcha, while Anurag Thakur continues as Yuva Morcha president in the new team.

While Prakash Javadekar, Shahnawaz Hussain and Nirmala Sitharaman will continue as spokespersons, the new additions are Vijay Sonkar Shashtri, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Meenakshi Lekhi and Captain Abhimanyu.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, who is the BJP's deputy leader in Rajya Sabha, has been dropped as the chief spokesperson of the party.
Poonam Mahajan, daughter of late party leader Pramod Mahajan, has found a place in Singh's team and has been made a secretary, while Punjab's former health minister Laxmi Kanta has been given the post of vice president.

S S Ahluwalia, who was earlier BJP's deputy leader in Rajya Sabha, will be a vice president.

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The new BJP team, which has adequate representation of women, includes tribal leader Jual Urao as vice president and Luise Marandi from Jharkhand as secretary.

The 12-member Central Parliamentary Board headed by Singh has top party leaders Atal Behari Vajpayee, L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, M Venkaiah Naidu, Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Ananth Kumar, Thawar Chand Gehlot and Ram Lal in it, besides Modi, who was inducted today.

All these top leaders, along with Gopinath Munde, Jual Oran, Shahnawaz Hussain, Vinay Katiyar, J P Nadda and Dr Harshwardhan, are part of the party's Central Election Committee. Mahila Morcha chief Saroj Pandey is the ex-officio member of this committee.

The new vice presidents also include Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, C P Thakur, Balbir Punj, Satpal Malik, Prabhat Jha, Bijyo Chakravarti and Kiran Maheshwari, while the other General Secretaries are Ananth Kumar, Thawar Chand Gehlot, J P Nadda, Dharmendra Pradhan, Tapir Gao, Murlidhar Rao and Ram Lal, who will continue as Organising Secretary of the party.  V Satish and Soudan Singh will be the new joint general secretaries (Organisation), while Shyam Jaju, Bhupendra Yadav, Krishan Das, Anil Jain, Vinod Pandey, Trivendra Rawat, Rameshwar Chaurasiya, Aaarti Mehra, Renu Kushwaha, Sudha Yadav, Sudha Malaiya, Tamil Isai and Vani Tripathi are secretaries.

Sanjay Paswan has been made president of the BJP Scheduled Caste Morcha and Faggan Singh Kulaste the president of the Scheduled Tribe Morcha, Abdul Rashid will head the Minority Morcha and Om Prakash Dhankar will head the party's Kisan Morcha.

Rajya Sabha MP Piyush Goyal has been retained as treasurer and O P Kohli as headquarter in-charge, while former MP Ramkripal Sinha will be office secretary of the Parliamentary Party and Shanmuknathan is the joint office secretary of the Parliamentary Party.

The party's Central Disciplinary Committee has Radha Mohan Singh as president, Jagdish Mukhi as secretary and L Ganesahn, Hari Babu and Shyam Nandan Singh as its members.

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