New Delhi, July 16: Smriti Irani has been dropped from the cabinet committee on parliamentary affairs, days after being shifted from the human resource development ministry to the textiles ministry.

Smriti had been inducted into the panel - one of a total of six cabinet committees - as a special invitee in June 2014.

Now her successor in the human resource development ministry, Prakash Javadekar, has found a place on the parliamentary affairs panel as a full-fledged member, not just a special invitee.

Like Smriti, Javadekar had been a special invitee to this committee when he was a minister of state with independent charge of the environment and forests ministry. He was promoted to cabinet rank during the July 5 shuffle of the council of ministers.

The current special invitees to the panel include the two junior ministers for parliamentary affairs, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and S.S. Ahluwalia, and a surprise choice: P.P. Chaudhary, junior minister for law and justice as well as electronics and information technology.

Ahluwalia and Chaudhary were inducted into Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ministerial team in the July 5 shuffle, which led to the revamp of all the cabinet panels on July 14.

Apart from parliamentary affairs, there are panels on appointments, accommodation, economic affairs, political affairs and security.

Ananth Kumar, who has gained the parliamentary affairs portfolio while retaining chemicals and fertilisers, is on all the panels except for the one on security, which provides an indication of his growing importance.

"At last, he has managed to live down the perception that he is an (L.K.) Advani confidant, which he needed to do to get on the right side of the Prime Minister and the BJP president (Amit Shah)," a party source said.

A place on a cabinet panel depends largely on the portfolio a member holds, although this is not a hard and fast rule.

For instance, when the panels were tweaked following the last ministerial changes in November 2014, J.P. Nadda, freshly inducted as health minister, was drafted into the political affairs committee although his predecessor Harsh Vardhan had not been on it.

Sources explained that Nadda's status as an old hand in the party organisation "probably" led to his inclusion in the panel.

With Smriti, the other ministers taken off the committees are D.V. Sadananda Gowda and Rajiv Pratap Rudy.

As former law minister, Gowda was on the parliamentary affairs committee. His successor, Ravi Shankar Prasad, is in. Prasad was already on the political affairs and economic affairs panels.

Rudy has lost the portfolio of junior parliamentary affairs minister and is now left only with skill development.

Ananth Kumar's predecessor, M. Venkaiah Naidu, has kept his place on the parliamentary affairs committee even after being relocated to the information and broadcasting ministry.

Members from the BJP's allies have retained their panel berths: Ram Vilas Paswan in economic affairs, parliamentary affairs and political affairs; Telugu Desam's Ashok Gajapathi Raju in economic affairs and political affairs; Akali Dal's Harsimrat Kaur Badal in economic affairs and political affairs; and Shiv Sena's Anant Geete in political affairs.

After taking over as Prime Minister, Modi had pared the number of parliamentary committees from 10 to six, doing away with those on the WTO, infrastructure (now merged with economic affairs), prices and the Unique Identification Authority of India.