Exploring journey of India's women Chief Ministers: From Sucheta to Atishi

Delhi Finance Minister Atishi is set to be the Chief Minister of Delhi as Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener Arvind Kejriwal has submitted his resignation to Delhi Lieutenant Governor Vinai Saxena. AAP legislators have elected her as the Chief Minister-designate. A legislator elected from the Kalkaji assembly constituency, the 43-year-old politician will be the third woman to hold the post in Delhi’s politics.

Atishi will take oath as the Chief Minister of Delhi on September 21. Along with Atishi, other leaders will also take oath as ministers: Aam Aadmi Party

(file photo) pic.twitter.com/bILGqL2fHO

— ANI (@ANI) September 19, 2024

Atishi currently holds the portfolio of education, finance, law, tourism, and several other departments.

 

India has seen 16 women Chief Ministers till now, and Atishi will be the 17th. Meanwhile, Delhi has had Sushma Swaraj and Sheila Dikshit as its Chief Ministers. Janaki Ramachandran held the post in the state of Tamil Nadu for the shortest period of time. Mayawati became the first Dalit woman to hold the post, meanwhile, Syeda Anwara Taimur was the first Muslim woman.

A look at the 16 women Chief Ministers:

Sucheta Kriplani

State: Uttar Pradesh

Party: Indian National Congress

Tenure: October 1963–March 1967

Sucheta Kriplani was born in Ambala, Punjab. She was a freedom fighter and participated in the Quit India movement. Though she evaded arrest initially, she was later arrested in 1944 and detained for a year. In 1946, she was elected to the Constituent Assembly from the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) and was also a member of the Flag Presentation Committee, which presented the first Indian flag.

She was one of the few women parliamentarians in India and was elected in the first and second general elections from the Congress party. She became the first woman Chief Minister in India in 1963 and served the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Nandini Satpathy

State: Odisha

Party: Indian National Congress

Tenure: June 1972 to March 1973; March 1974 to December 1976

Nandini Satpathy became the first woman Chief Minister of Odisha. She was born in Cuttack and was an author and editor of the Odia monthly ‘Kalana’. She was a celebrated writer in the Odia language, and her work was translated into several other languages. Her last work was translating Tasleema Nasreen’s novel ‘Lajja’ into the Odia language. She was the first woman to take the oath of office as Chief Minister twice. Although she served in the Congress party, her uncle was the founder of the Odisha branch of the Communist Party of India.

In 1962, when the country was rooting for more women representation in politics, Congress sent Satpathy to the Upper House. Later, she returned to Odisha after Biju Patnaik left Congress over clashes with Indira Gandhi, leading her to become the Chief Minister.

Shashikala Kakodkar

State: Goa

Party: Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party

Tenure: August 1973 to April 1979

Shashikala Kakodkar was born in Goa, Portuguese India. She served twice as the Chief Minister of Goa, Daman, and Diu (up until 1987, Goa was a Union Territory clubbed with Daman and Diu). Her father, Dayanand Bandodkar, became the Chief Minister of the state in the first democratically held elections in 1963. She graduated from Karnataka and then went to Mumbai to pursue postgraduate studies. When she returned to Goa, she engaged in social work.

She first contested the legislative assembly election in 1967 from the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party and became the second woman member of the assembly. In the 1972 elections, she was elected again and became Minister of State. On August 12, 1973, her father died in office, and she was unanimously elected as the Chief Minister by the party legislators.

Syeda Anwara Taimur

State: Assam

Party: Indian National Congress

Tenure: December 1980 to June 1981

Syeda Anwara Taimur was the first and only woman Chief Minister of Assam. She was also the first Muslim woman Chief Minister of any state. She was born in 1936 in Assam. She graduated with honours in economics from Aligarh Muslim University, then became a lecturer at Devicharan Barua Girls' College, Jorhat, in 1956.

Taimur was first elected to the state legislative assembly of Assam in 1972 and then re-elected in 1978, 1983, and 1991. She served as the Chief Minister for a short stint between periods of President’s rule in the state. She was one of the prominent personalities whose names were not included in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in 2018. She passed away in 2020.

Janaki Ramachandran

State: Tamil Nadu

Party: All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam

Tenure: January 7, 1988, to January 30, 1988

Janaki Ramachandran was the first woman Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and also the Chief Minister who served for the shortest period of 24 days. Vaikom Narayani Janaki was born in Kerala and later became an actress in the Tamil film industry. She acted in many films with her future husband, Maruthur Gopalan Ramachandran (MGR).

After MGR launched his party, AIADMK, she participated with him in protests and demonstrations. But she became relevant to the party only in 1984 when MGR fell ill. She started issuing instructions to the party workers on his behalf.

J Jayalalithaa was the protégé of MGR, and when he died in 1987, the party split into two factions. Janaki was sworn in as the Chief Minister, but she had to prove her majority within three weeks. On the day of the confidence motion, violence broke out in the assembly, and Janaki’s 24-day government was dismissed. Later, she quit politics completely.

J Jayalalithaa

State: Tamil Nadu

Party: All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam

Tenure: June 1991 to May 1996; May 2001 to September 2001; March 2002 to May 2006; May 2011 to September 2014; May 2015 to 2016

After the struggle with her mentor and AIADMK leader MGR’s widow, Janaki Ramachandran, J Jayalalithaa proclaimed herself as the political heir of the leader and emerged as the sole leader of the party.

She became the leader of the opposition after the elections of 1989 and became the second woman Chief Minister of the state in 1991. She served for more than fourteen years and was sworn in six times, the most by a woman Chief Minister.

Her government came into the limelight for its welfare schemes and ‘Amma’ branded subsidised goods as she was revered as Amma and Puratchi Thalaivi by her party workers. Her life in politics revolved around controversies. She died in 2016 due to cardiac arrest and became the first female Chief Minister in India to die in office.

Mayawati

State: Uttar Pradesh

Party: Bahujan Samaj Party

Tenure: June 1995 to October 1995; March 1997 to September 1997; May 2002 to August 2003; May 2007 to March 2012

Uttar Pradesh gave the country its first woman Chief Minister in any state and also the first Dalit woman Chief Minister.

Mayawati, born into the family of a post office employee, studied at the University of Delhi and graduated in LLB. In 1977, she joined social reformer and politician Kanshi Ram, who later founded the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in 1984. Mayawati was elected to Parliament from the BSP in 1989.

In 1995, she became the Chief Minister for the first time in a short-lived coalition government. Later, she was sworn in for two more short stints, and in 2007, she became the Chief Minister and completed her tenure of five years by winning 206 seats. She became the first person to do so in the history of Uttar Pradesh.

In 2021, Kanshi Ram named her as his successor for the party.

Rajinder Kaur Bhattal

State: Punjab

Party: Indian National Congress

Tenure: January 1996 to February 1997

After thirteen Chief Ministers, Punjab saw its first female Chief Minister in Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, who took oath in 1996 following the resignation of Harcharan Singh Brar.

Bhattal was born in Lahore in 1945. She was first elected in 1992 and has been elected for five consecutive terms since then. Although she served as the Chief Minister for a little over a year, she later served as the Deputy Chief Minister of the state between 2004 and 2007. She won the post after hard negotiations with the then Congress party Chief Sonia Gandhi over her disputes with the sitting Chief Minister Amarinder Singh.

Rabri Devi

State: Bihar

Party: Rashtriya Janata Dal

Tenure: July 1997 to February 1999; March 1999 to March 2000; March 2000 to March 2005

Rabri Devi became the first female Chief Minister of Bihar unexpectedly when her husband, Lalu Prasad Yadav, was forced to resign from the post due to an arrest warrant issued against him in the fodder scam case, famously known as the Chara Ghotala case.

She first became a member of the Bihar legislative assembly after she was sworn in as Chief Minister because prior to that, she was a housewife with no involvement in politics. She is now a three-time MLA and four-time MLC of Bihar.

Sushma Swaraj

State: Delhi

Party: Bharatiya Janata Party

Tenure: October 1998 to December 1998

Sushma Swaraj was the first female Chief Minister of Delhi and also the first female Chief Minister from the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In 1998, she was sworn in after two BJP Chief Ministers resigned amid public outrage over increasing inflation and scams. She held the post for 52 days before the Assembly went into elections.

Later in 2014, when the BJP came to power, she became Union Minister for External Affairs and was the only person to complete her tenure in the ministry after Jawaharlal Nehru.

Sheila Dikshit

State: Delhi

Party: Indian National Congress

Tenure: December 1998 to December 2013

Just after Delhi saw its first female Chief Minister, Sushma Swaraj, Sheila Dikshit succeeded her to become the second female and also the longest-serving Chief Minister of Delhi. She remained in office for 15 years.

The Congress leader led the party to three consecutive victories in state elections. Her government is praised for Delhi’s development as the Delhi Metro started during her tenure. In 2009 and 2013, she was investigated for alleged misuse of government funds, but no charges were brought.

Uma Bharti

State: Madhya Pradesh
 

Party: Bharatiya Janata Party

Tenure: December 2003 to August 2004

The first female Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh was Uma Bharti. She has been the BJP parliamentarian since 1989 and was also among the leaders who led the Ram Mandir movement. She was present at the site when the Babri Masjid was demolished. Later, a special CBI court acquitted her of the charges against her in the case.

She was sworn in after the BJP swept the assembly elections under her leadership in 2003. However, she had to resign within a year when an arrest warrant was issued against her in the 1994 Hubli riots case.

Later, she left the BJP, founded her own party, and became a member of the legislative assembly of Uttar Pradesh.

Vasundhara Raje

State: Rajasthan

Party: Bharatiya Janata Party

Tenure: December 2003 to December 2008 (1st term); December 2013 to 2018

Vasundhara Raje Scindia, daughter of Gwalior’s Maharaja Jivajirao Scindia-Shinde, is a member of the prominent Scindia royal Maratha family. She was married to Maharaja Rana Hemant Singh of the royal Dholpur family in 1972. Her mother, Rajmata Scindia, was already an active politician.

In 1984, she entered politics by joining the newly formed BJP. She was a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. In 2002, she rose to the position of BJP’s state President, and when BJP swept the 2003 Assembly elections, she became the first female Chief Minister of Rajasthan.

Mamata Banerjee

State: West Bengal

Party: All India Trinamool Congress

Tenure: May 2011 till present

Mamata Banerjee became the first female Chief Minister of West Bengal in 2011, ending the 34-year rule of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the longest-serving democratically elected communist government.

She started her political career in the Congress party and served in various ministries in the Union government. Later, she parted ways and founded her own political party, Trinamool Congress. She allied with the NDA government during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s tenure but became the Chief Minister by allying with the UPA.

Banerjee’s victory in the 2011 election is often credited to her political activism in the 2000s. She protested in Singur against setting up the manufacturing plant of Tata Nano, which led Ratan Tata to shift the plant of his project to Gujarat. However, she led to electoral success with the Nandigram protest in 2007, where at least 14 villagers were shot dead by the police.

Anandiben Patel

State: Gujarat

Party: Bharatiya Janata Party

Tenure: May 2014 to August 2016

Anandiben Patel became the first female Chief Minister of Gujarat when Narendra Modi resigned and moved to Delhi to be sworn in as the Prime Minister of India in 2014. Patel served for two years in the post and later resigned because she was turning 75 in 2016. She is currently serving as the Governor of Uttar Pradesh.

Patel was a school teacher by profession, and after joining politics, she served as Education Minister of Gujarat.

She was awarded the Gujarat government’s ‘Gallantry Award’ for saving two girl students of Mohinaba Kanya Vidyalaya, who did not know how to swim, from drowning in the Narmada River.

Mehbooba Mufti

State: Jammu and Kashmir

Party: People’s Democratic Party

Tenure: April 4, 2016, to June 19, 2018

When Mufti Mohammed Sayeed died due to multiple organ failure in 2016, his daughter Mehbooba Mufti, who was a member of Parliament from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), was elected by the party to take on the post of Chief Minister in the government that was in alliance with the BJP. She became the first female to hold the post in Jammu and Kashmir.

Just two years into her tenure, a rift started in the alliance between the two parties when two J&K ministers from the BJP supported the person alleged in the Kathua rape case. The ministers were sacked. Later, the BJP withdrew support from the government, resulting in her resignation.

Mehbooba Mufti was detained when the Union government abrogated Article 370, which provided special status to J&K.