‘Women strength’ in Modi’s cabinet reduced – 2024-06-11 14:17:17

Seven women have made it to Narendra Modi’s third cabinet. Two of them became full ministers. There were 10 women ministers in Modi’s second term government. That is, the number of women members in the new cabinet has decreased by three.

Among the women dropped from the cabinet are former Union Minister Smriti Irani, Minister of State Bharti Pawar, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Darshana Zardosh, Meenakshi Lekhi and Pratima Bhowmik.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi and 71 other members of the new cabinet took oath in a grand ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi last Sunday (June 9) evening. Nirmala Sitharaman and Annapurna Devi took oath as full ministers on this day.

Rajya Sabha member Nirmala Sitharaman has previously held the charge of major ministries like Finance and Defense of India. And Annapurna Devi, a member elected twice from Kodarama Lok Sabha seat, has been promoted to full minister from state minister. He was the Minister of State for Education in the outgoing government.

Other women ministers who took oath on Sunday are Anupriya Patel, Raksha Khadse, Savitri Thakur, Shobha Karandlaje and Nimben Bamvaniya.

Anupriya Patel has been the President of Apna Dal (Sonilal) since 2016. He has served as the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry of India since 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he was the State Minister of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Anupriya has been representing Mirzapur in the Lok Sabha since 2014. In this election, his party’s Lok Sabha seats were reduced from two to one.

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37-year-old Raksha Khase is the daughter-in-law of veteran Maharashtra politician Eknath Khase. Raksha, a three-time Member of Parliament from Raver, has previously served as a Sarpanch and Zilla Parishad member.

Another woman who became a minister for the first time is Savitri Tagore. He was elected Member of Parliament twice from Dhar seat. He won the 2014 election but lost the 2019 election. But this time Savitri won by a margin of more than two lakh votes. He has long experience of working at panchayat level before becoming a minister.

BJP leader Shobha Karandlaje is a two-time MP from Karnataka. Shobha is one of the ministers of Narendra Modi’s second government who also retained in the third cabinet. Earlier he was Minister of State for Food Processing Industries and Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

57-year-old Nimuben Vambania is a Member of Parliament from Bhavnagar. He was once a teacher by profession. He has previously served as Mayor of Bhavnagar and has held various organizational roles in the BJP.

Source: NDTV, Times of India
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