BJP parliamentarian Varun Gandhi was on Thursday dropped from the party national executive committee along with mother Maneka Gandhi hours after he had tweeted that “protesters cannot be silenced through murder” and demanded “accountability for the innocent blood of farmers”.

Varun has been the lone voice in the BJP demanding justice for the protesting farmers run over and killed in Lakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh, on Sunday by a car that Union minister of state for home Ajay Mishra Teni has accepted as belonging to him.

On Thursday morning, Varun tweeted a longer and clearer version of a video showing people being run over by a car.

“The video is crystal clear. Protesters cannot be silenced through murder,” the MP from Pilibhit, which adjoins Lakhimpur Kheri, said in his tweet.

“There has to be accountability for the innocent blood of farmers that has been spilled and justice must be delivered before a message of arrogance and cruelty enters the minds of every farmer.”

In the afternoon, the BJP released a reconstituted list of its national executive members, from which Varun and Maneka — MP from Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh — were missing. Maneka had been a cabinet minister in the first Narendra Modi government but did not make it to the second government in 2019.

The BJP’s national executive committee has 80 members, 50 special invitees and 179 permanent invitees. Another key member dropped was Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy, who has been critical of the government over several issues such as the economy and the China border standoff.

Officially, the BJP gave no reason for the changes. Party leaders dodged the question whether Varun had been punished for his tweets and claimed the changes were a routine matter. They said the list had been revised now because the party planned to hold a meeting of its office-bearers later this month.

Varun has been tweeting regularly on the Lakhimpur Kheri incident as well as on the farmers’ 10-month-old protest against three central farm laws, and has been perceived as defying the party line on both issues.

His tweet on Thursday has been the strongest so far, appearing to obliquely express his anger that no arrests had been made so far despite “crystal clear” evidence.

Varun had on Monday written a letter to chief minister Yogi Adityanath — and also tweeted it — demanding a murder case be lodged and a Supreme Court-monitored CBI probe be instituted.

On Tuesday, he tweeted a shorter and grainier version of the video that showed a black jeep ploughing through protesting farmers from behind, saying it was enough to “shake anybody’s soul”. He had demanded that those responsible be arrested.

Varun had earlier said the farmers protesting the farm laws should be treated with sensitivity.