The BJP Parliamentary Party Executive Committee was constituted on Wednesday with Prime Minister  Narendra Modi as the leader of the party, Rajnath Singh as Deputy leader of the party (Lok Sabha), Thawar Chand Gehlot as leader of party in Rajya Sabha and Piyush Goyal as Deputy leader of party in the upper house.

Ghelot, a Dalit leader, has replaced former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley while the  two-time Rajya Sabha MP Goyal will be succeeding Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who has been elected to the Lok Sabha. Jaitley had requested the leadership to relieve him from key positions in view of his health. Goyal had served as finance minister for a brief period when Jaitley was not well in the last dispensation of Modi-government.

Union Minister Smriti Irani’s induction in the BJP’s parliamentary party executive committee shows elevation in her stature within the party after she trounced Congress president Rahul Gandhi from the Amethi parliamentary constituency.

The newly constituted BJP parliamentary party executive committee marks generational shift in the party as perhaps for the first time L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi are not part of it, as both are not MPs. Besides them, Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj are also not its members.

The BJP has also decided to make Sanjay Jaiswal, the party’s Lok Sabha MP from Bihar, its chief whip in the house. He will succeed Anurag Thakur, who has become a Minister in the new Modi Government. It also the first time appointed three women MPs as its whips, specifically for women parliamentarians.

Besides these, three women whips and 15 other whips for Lok Sabha have also been appointed for parliamentarians from different states, where its strength has increased to 303.

 Special invitees from Lok Sabha to the BJP’s parliamentary party executive are  Nitin Gadkari, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Arjun Munda, Narendra Singh Tomar and Jual Oram.

 In Rajya Sabha, special invitees are J P Nadda, Om Prakash Mathur, Nirmala Sitharaman, Dharmendra Pradhan and Prakash Javadekar. BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya has been reappointed as in-charge of the party’s parliamentary office and Balasubrahmanyam Kumarsu as secretary.

The first meeting of the executive will be held on June 16 at 3:30 pm, a day before the commencement of the session.

The government has also called an all-party meeting on the same day in the morning which will be chaired by the prime minister.