The BJP leadership has quietly dropped former Union minister Yashwant Sinha from the 15-member core committee of the parliamentary party, sources disclosed here on Thursday.

The committee is designed to formulate the floor strategy in Parliament as well as the party’s response to important issues. The action is a fallout of Sinha’s criticism of the leadership on several counts, including the nomination of Arun Jaitley as the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

The party had earlier relieved Sinha of all party posts after he had expressed a wish to relinquish them.

Sinha is credited with an ambition to be either projected as a chief ministerial candidate of the BJP in his home state Jharkhand or move the ladder up in the parliamentary party and play a key role in the Lok Sabha. However, there are roadblocks on his path, both ways. While Arjun Munda remains a favourite of the party for the top job in Jharkhand, he is unable to make any headway in the parliamentary wing due to his strained relations with Leader of the Opposition L K Advani. Though he has held important portfolios like external affairs and finance in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government, Sinha does not enjoy a matching clout in the party organisation. A rather late entrant to the BJP, he is perceived as an “outsider”. There is no room for him on the front bench in the House either. He has to sit in the second row in the company of Shahnawaz Hussain, Ramesh Bais, Kailash Joshi and Arjun Munda.

... contd.