Team Blitz India
SEVEN women have made it to the new council of ministers. The previous council had 10 women ministers. Those dropped from the council include former Union Minister Smriti Irani, Minister of State Bharti Pawar, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Darshana Jardosh, Meenakshi Lekhi, and Pratima Bhoumik.
Irani and Pawar lost their seats in Amethi and Dandori, respectively. Jyoti, Jardosh, Lekhi, and Bhoumik were not fielded by the BJP. The new women ministers are former Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, BJP MPs Annpurna Devi, Sobha Karandlaje, Raksha Nikhil Khadse, Savitri Thakur, and Nimuben Jayantibhai Bambhaniya, and Apna Dal MP Anupriya Patel.
Sitharaman and Devi have been inducted into the Union Cabinet, while the others have been sworn in as Ministers of State. A total of 74 women won the Lok Sabha elections this year, a slight decrease from the 78 elected in 2019.
Nirmala Sitharaman (BJP): A Rajya Sabha member, Nirmala was the Union finance minister in the previous government. This is her third consecutive term in the Union Cabinet.
Annapurna Devi (BJP): An OBC leader from Jharkhand, Annapurna Devi the second woman in the Union Cabinet. She has served as minister at the state level in Jharkhand and undivided Bihar.
Savitri Thakur (BJP): A prominent tribal leader form Madhya Pradesh, she won from the Dhar seat in the Lok Sabha elections 2024.
Nimuben Bambhaniya (BJP): She is one of three women to win from Gujarat on a BJP ticket. Nimuben, who won from the Bhavnagar constituency, had earlier served as the mayor of Bhavnagar for two terms.
Raksha Khadse (BJP): She is the daughter-in-law of former BJP leader Eknath Khadse, is a three term MP from Maharashtra. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, she won from Raver.
Shobha Karandlaje (BJP): A close confidante of state BJP strongman BS Yediyurappa, Karandlaje is a three-time Lok Sabha member. Karandlaje won from Bangalore North.
Anupriya Patel is the chief of Apna Dal (Sonelal), an ally of the BJP. She was minister of state for health and family welfare in the first Narendra Modi government, and was named the junior minister for commerce and industry in Modi 2.0. Her party’s Lok Sabha seat tally dropped from two to one in this election.
