PROMINET Dalit face Thawar Chand Gehlot Is RS Leader: Rajnath Singh is BJP’s DY Leader in LS: Locket Chatterjee, Shobha Karandlaje & Ranjanaben Bhatt Named Whips
BJP’s Parliamentary party has been constituted with Defence Minister Raj Nath Singh as the Deputy to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha. Modi continues as the Leader of the ruling BJP in the 17th Lok Sabha. Social Justice Minister Thawar Chand Gehlot, 71, has replaced veteran Arun Jaitley as the BJP’s Leader in the Rajya Sabha where ruling BJP is the largest party followed by INC. Railway Minister Piyush Goyal is the new Deputy Leader of the BJP in the Council of the States. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Textiles and Woman and Child Welfare Minister Smriti Irani are special invitees. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahlad Joshi from Karnataka will be the Chief Whip of the Treasury Benches with Arjun Ram Meghwal and V. Muraleedharan as his deputies.Sanjay Jaiswal will be Chief Whip in Lok Sabha and Narayan Lal Panchariya in the Rajya Sabha. The newly-constituted BJP parliamentary party does not include LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley as they have stayed away from Lok Sabha poll. Lawyer turned politician Jaitley ,who headed the Union Finance Ministry for five years and was Leader of the ruling party in the Upper House ,was entrusted with the implementation of demonetization and Goods & Service Tax has, opted out of out of cabinet berth on medical advice. He has vacated official residence and moved to his own house in South Delhi. For the first time, three women leaders have been appointed Whips specifically for women MPs in the Lok Sabha. They are Ranjanaben Bhatt from Gujarat, Shobha Karandlaje elected from Karnataka and Locket Chatterjee from Bengal. Senior ministers Nitin Gadkari, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Arjun Munda, Narendra Singh Tomar and Jual Oram. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman are among the Special Invitees in the Rajya Sabha along with J P Nadda, Om Prakash Mathur, Dharmendra Pradhan and Prakash Javadekar. Party MP Kailash Vijayvargiya is in charge of the parliamentary party while Balasubrahmanyam Kamarsu is the office secretary. Gopal Shetty is the treasurer of the BJP parliamentary party. Gehlot from MP’s Nagda, the new leader of Rajya Sabha, is an experienced parliamentarian, Gehlot represents the Dalit community. He was a four-term Lok Sabha MP before becoming Rajya Sabha Member in 2012 and was re-elected to the House in 2018. His current Rajya Sabha term will end in 2024.
