Meet the new BJP parliamentary board members
From former Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal to ex-Haryana MP Sudha Yadav, here are the profiles of the BJP's new parliamentary board members.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Wednesday rejigged its parliamentary board, the party’s highest decision-making body. After the reshuffle, these new members were inducted into the board. Here are their profiles:
Sarbananda Sonowal: Former N-E face of BJP, ex-Assam CM and prominent tribal leader, who made way for Himanta Sarma
Before Himanta Biswa Sarma, Sarbananda Sonowal was the BJP’s prime Northeast face, leading the party to its historic maiden victory in Assam in 2016. However, Sonowal’s career started not in the BJP, but in 1992 as a leader of the influential All Assam Students’ Union (which led the Assam Agitation of 1985). In 2001, he joined the Asom Gana Parishad, becoming an MLA the same year, and then an MP.
Sonowal’s ‘son-of-the-soil’ status in Assam further got cemented when he successfully challenged the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act in the Supreme Court in 2005 as inadequate, earning him the local moniker “jatiyo nayak” or national hero.
Sonowal joined the BJP in 2011, becoming the spokesperson and general secretary of the party’s Assam unit and later earning a place (Sports Ministry) in Narendra Modi’s first Cabinet in 2014. Before Sarma, it was Sonowal who was known to have political links with all the northeastern states, having served as the president of the North East Students’ Organisation (NESO), the umbrella organisation of different student unions of the region.
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