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April in Bengaluru will see the apex national meets of both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress. The BJP's National Executive (NE) will meet there in the first week of next month. Later in April will see the All India Congress Committee session.
BJP President Amit Shah also finalised a new 178-member NE, of 111 members and another 67 permanent and special invitees. Notable faces dropped from the earlier NE are Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani, Minorities Affairs Minister Najma Heptullah, Mathura MP Hema Malini, Maharashtra youth leader Shaina N C, former Rajya Sabha MP Balbir Punj and Deepak Chopra. Both Chopra and Punj are considered close to senior leader L K Advani. Advani, former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi have been retained. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several cabinet ministers remain in the executive.
New entrants are ministers Suresh Prabhu, Birender Singh, V K Singh and Inderjeet Singh. Minister and singer Babul Supriyo and Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher have been made special invitees. Inderjeet Singh and Birender Singh, both from Haryana, joined the party from the Congress in the past year. Prabhu left the Shiv Sena.
Both Maneka Gandhi and son Varun Gandhi are members, as are Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and her son, Dushyant Singh, an MP. Yashwant Sinha retains his place; his son, minister of state for finance, Jayant Sinha, was not included. The NE includes state heads, leaders in state assemblies and legislative councils, former chief ministers and deputy CMs.
The executive will meet in Bengaluru on April 3 and 4.
Where it is likely to take stock of the performance of its governments at the Centre and states.
And, prepare for the Bihar elections later this year and those to West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerala in mid-2016.
The earlier NE meeting was in August 2014 in Delhi, to ratify the election of Shah as party president.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is to also begin the annual meeting of its Pratinidhi Sabha, its highest decision making body, at its headquarters in Nagpur. The Sabha had earlier met in March last year, months before its ideological offspring, the BJP, formed the government at the Centre.
RSS spokesperson Manmohan Vaidya said one of the resolutions to be discussed was on imparting of education in primary schools in the mother tongue. “The craze of English is to the detriment of students," he said.
