In Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s expansion of the Council of Ministers, seven women MPs took oath as Union Ministers on Wednesday. It was the first expansion of the Union Council of Ministers by PM Modi in his second term as Prime Minister. The swearing-in ceremony came days ahead of the monsoon session of parliament. The women MPs, who took an oath of office, are Anupriya Patel, Shobha Karandlaje, Darshana Vikram Jardosh, Meenakshi Lekhi, Annapurna Devi, Pratima Bhoumik and Bharati Pravin Pawar.
Apna Dal leader Anupriya Singh Patel was elected to the lower house from Mirzapur in 2019. She is into her second term as an MP and had served as Union Minister of State for Health in the first term of the Modi government. She was the first woman to take oath as Union Minister on Wednesday.
Shobha Karandlaje, Lok Sabha MP from Karnataka’s Udupi Chikmagalur, has served as Cabinet Minister in the Karnataka government. She has held a range of portfolios including Food and Civil Supplies, Power, Rural Development and Panchayati Raj. She is into her second term as MP and has been in public life for three decades.
Meenakshi Lekhi has been twice elected from the New Delhi parliamentary constituency as BJP MP. She is a Supreme Court lawyer, social worker and has been a member of the New Delhi Municipal Corporation. Darshana Vikram Jardosh, BJP MP from Surat, has earlier been corporator of Surat Municipal Corporation and a Member of the Gujarat Social Welfare Board. She is serving her third term as MP.
Annapurna Devi, a first-time Lok Sabha MP from Jharkhand’s Kodarma, has served as a Cabinet Minister in Jharkhand Government and handled portfolios such as irrigation, and women and child welfare. Pratima Bhoumik is a BJP MP for Tripura West and is into her first term in Lok Sabha. Bharati Pravin Pawar, who was elected from Dindori in Maharashtra, is serving her first term as MP. She had earlier served as a member of Nashik Zila Parishad. Before joining public life she was a medical practitioner.