Nirmala convener Rajnath will lead the BJP’s 27-member electoral manifesto panel

The current Lucknow MP and minister of defense, Rajnath Singh, will lead a 27-person BJP Lok Sabha manifesto committee.

The most representation from the battleground state of Uttar Pradesh, which has the most parliamentary seats in India and is crucial to the BJP’s objective of 370 or more MPs in the 543-seat House, is present on the panel, which was presented on Saturday.

The panel’s chairman is Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, a Tamil Nadu native, while its co-convener is Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, a Maharashtra native.

Of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, 167 are held by UP (80), Tamil Nadu (39), and Maharashtra (48), whose leaders will direct the BJP’s major manifesto writing process.

Crucially, although current Chief Minister Mohan Yadav of Madhya Pradesh and previous Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan have both been elected to the important committee, current Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma of Rajasthan is not on the list, but former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje is. Despite her son’s re-nomination, Raje is not included among the BJP’s Lok Sabha candidates for this election cycle.

Arjun Munda, Bhupender Yadav, Kiren Rijiju, Arjun Ram Meghwal, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Dharmendra Pradhan, Smriti Irani, and Rajeev Chandrashekhar are the other union ministers on the committee.

Former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi, who has been refused a Lok Sabha ticket, and Chief Ministers of Chhattisgarh (Vishnu Deo Sai), Assam (Himanta Biswa Sarma), Gujarat (Bhupendra Patel), and MP (Mohan Yadav) are also members of the committee.

Manjinder Singh Sirsa from Delhi, Anil Antony from Kerala, the son of Congress veteran AK Antony, and Tariq Mansoor, the national vice-president of the BJP and a former vice-chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University from Uttar Pradesh, are among the figures who represent the minorities on the panel. Mansoor is a symbol of the majority of the backward Pasmanda Muslims.

Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, Lucknow MP Rajnath Singh, Amethi MP Smriti Irani, Tariq Mansoor, and Radha Mohan Das Agarwal are the five UP members on the panel.

In terms of the area, OP Dhankar, a former state unit president who was recently named in charge of the Lok Sabha election in Delhi, represents Haryana on the committee.

The regions of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, J&K, Ladakh, and Chandigarh are not represented on the panel.

To get ideas for the manifesto, the BJP had already conducted a national survey. The committee will compile the recommendations.