From Anupriya Patel to Bharati Pawar, meet newly inducted women ministers

In the 7 July Cabinet reshuffle, seven women ministers were inducted

The percentage of women in the Union council of ministers had been dropping steadily. In 2014, the council of ministers had seven women ministers; in 2019, this came down to six. 

In percentage terms, in 2014, 15.6 per cent of all ministers were women. In 2019, this came down to 10.5.

In the 7 July reshuffle, seven women ministers were inducted. And, that brought the number of women ministers in the government of India to 11 (14.1 per cent of the council of ministers) — the highest since 2004.

Who are these new women ministers of state? And, what do they tell us about the changing profile of Indian society and politics?

Take a look:

Anupriya Patel, Mirzapur
Commerce and Industry
 
President of the Apna Dal (Sonelal), an ally of the BJP, Patel represents a party that enjoys the support of Kurmis, a backward class that has some influence in eastern UP and Bundelkhand, as well as non-Yadav OBC groups, such as Kushwaha, Maurya, Nishad, Pal and Saini. She was health minister in the first Modi government. Her party contested 11 seats in the 2017 Assembly elections and won 9. Before her political career, Patel worked as a professor at Amity University, and has an MBA from Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj University, Kanpur. She’s married to Ashish Patel, a member of the UP Legislative Council.
 
Shobha Karandlaje, Udupi-Chikkamagaluru
Agriculture and farmer welfare
 
A known loyalist of BJP leader and Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa since her early days in the party, she was among the first prominent leaders to step out of the BJP in 2012 to rally behind Yediyurappa and join the Karnataka Janata Party (KJP).
 
She has held multiple portfolios in the state government, both under governments headed by Yediyurappa and Jagadish Shettar. She is a Vokkaliga, aligned with a Lingayat (Yediyurappa) leader. This is her second term in the Lok Sabha and her 2019 victory margin went up 60,000 votes since 2014.
 
Darshana Jardosh, Surat
Textiles and railways
 
Jardosh belongs to the Darji community, which comes under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category. She has represented Surat in 2009, 2014, and 2019 in the Lok Sabha. She has always been in the BJP, rising from the ranks as corporator, a women’s wing activist and later vice-president of the state unit. The 2014 Lok Sabha election was a turning point for her: She won by a margin of 5,33,190 votes. This was the biggest lead by any woman MP in the Indian electoral history, after Indira Gandhi. She got 76.6 per cent of all votes cast.
 
Meenakshi Lekhi, New Delhi
External affairs and culture
 
Lekhi’s political career began with the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch; she has represented New Delhi twice. It was the result of her consistent efforts that Race Course Road, where the prime minister’s residence is located, was re-named Lok Kalyan Marg. A gifted speaker and lawyer, she is known for pugnacity and tenacity. It was her contempt petition before the Supreme Court that forced Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to apologise for his ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ jibe at the PM. A Punjabi, she poses a challenge to the traditional Vaishya leadership of Delhi’s BJP.

Annapurna Devi, Koderma
Education
 
Devi’s rise is spectacular. Not only is she a first time MP but she joined the BJP only in 2019, from the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD): She was the president of the Jharkhand unit when she defected. She has been active in Jharkhand politics and represented Koderma four times in the Assembly. Devi was also a minister in the 2013 Hemant Soren-led Jharkhand Mukti Morcha government. She is the second Lok Sabha member from the state to have joined the Union council of ministers, after Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda.
 
Pratima Bhoumik, West Tripura
Social Justice and Empowerment
 
Bhoumik has been a BJP leader since 1991. She contested the Assembly polls from the Dhanpur constituency against former Chief Minister Manik Sarkar in 1998 and 2018, losing both times but never gave up the fight against the CPI-M. In 2019, she defeated sitting MP Shankar Prasad Dutta with a margin of 305,689 votes. She comes from a village close to the Indo-Bangla border and belongs to a family of farmers. Bhoumik has herself been a farmer for years. Her father was a school teacher. She is the first-ever MP from Tripura to join the Union council of ministers.
 
Bharati Pawar, Dindori
Health and family welfare
 
A first-term MP, Pawar is a trained doctor with a specialisation in surgery. She has done some work at the corporator level, but owes her rapid rise in politics in part to her father-in-law’s antecedents: She is the second daughter-in-law of eight-time MLA and ex-minister A T Pawar, who left the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to join the BJP. Ministers of state are not known to have too many powers, but she has been chosen with care to assist health minister Mansukh Mandaviya, who will likely leverage her professional competence in the fight against the Covid pandemic.