Nirmala Sitharaman to Annapurna Devi — Meet Prominent Women Ministers in Modi 3.0 Cabinet

New Delhi: In total, 71 ministers took oath alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 8. The 71 ministers included 30 cabinet ministers including Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, JP Nadda, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Nirmala Sitharaman, S Jaishankar to name a few. Apart from 30 cabinet ministers, 5 Ministers of State with Independent Charge and 36 Ministers of State also took oath at the Rashtrapati Bhawan premises.

Starting from Nirmala Sitharaman to Anupriya Patel, several prominent women ministers also took oath on Sunday. Check full list here:

Nirmala Sitharaman

Nirmala Sitharaman, who is among a few who have been Union Minister in both the 2014 and 2019 Modi cabinets, took oath as Union Cabinet Minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new Union Council of Ministers on Sunday evening in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan. She took the oath in English.

In the 2014 cabinet, she served as the Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs and later the Minister for Commerce and Industry with Independent Charge. In 2017, she was appointed as the Union Defence Minister.

In 2019, Sitharaman assumed charge as the Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs.

She was the first woman appointed as the full-time Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs. Earlier, Indira Gandhi had held finance as an additional portfolio for a short duration when she was the prime minister of India.

Annapurna Devi

A homemaker, Annapurna Devi, whose journey into politics started with the death of her husband, a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) legsilator in 1998, was sworn in as a Union Minister in the Narendra Modi Cabinet 3.0 on Sunday.

Notably, Annapurna joined the Bhartiya Janata Party before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, winning the Koderma seat by a significant margin. She rose within the BJP ranks, despite being associated with the RJD in the past and she underscores her growing influence among the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in Jharkhand, where she is seen as a key figure in consolidating the party’s support ahead of the upcoming assembly elections.

Anupriya Patel

Apna Dal (Soneylal) leader Anupriya Patel, an alliance partner of the Bharatiya Janata Party (NDA) in the National Democratic Alliance, was sworn in as one of the Union Council of Ministers in the new Narendra Modi-led government. Patel was the Union Minister of State in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in the Modi government from July 2021. Patel also held the charge of Union Minister of State in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare from July 2016 to May 2019.

She was appointed as a Member of the Indian Council of World Affairs, Committee on Petitions, Standing Committee on Energy, Railway Convention Committee, Committee on Welfare of Other Backward Classes, among others in the two terms of Narendra Modi government.

During the 2024 general elections, the 43-year-old leader had won the Mirzapur Lok Sabha constituency defeating Samajwadi Party candidate Ramesh Chand Bind with a margin of 37810 votes.

Shobha Karandlaj

First-ever woman MP from Bengaluru Shobha Karandlaje took oath as part of Modi cabinet 3.0. A prominent BJP leader, Shobha Karandlaj made history in Lok Sabha elections 2024 by becoming the first woman MP to represent Bengaluru, the capital city of Karnataka. She closely contested election and emerged victorious by the margin of 2,59,476 votes from Bengaluru North constituency defeating Congress candidate MV Rajeev Gowda.

Her political journey has been marked by her dedication and commitment to public service as she previously served as a member of the Karnataka legislative council and held the position of Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj in the state government.

Rakhya Khadse

Raksha Khadse joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ministry in its hat-trick term and took oath on Sunday. Raksha Khadse – a two-time BJP MP from Maharashtra’s Raver won the 2024 Lok Sabha election by a massive margin of nearly 3 lakh votes.

Savitri Thakur

Savitri Thakur on Sunday took oath as minister of state in Modi government 3.0. She won from Dhar (Scheduled Tribe reserved) seat in Madhya Pradesh in the Lok Sabha elections 2024.

A prominent woman tribal leader of the BJP in the state, Savitri Thakur in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections defeated the Congress’ Radheshyam Muvel by 2.18 lakh votes. She was first elected as a member of the district panchayat in 2003 and later became its president. After holding various party posts at the state and national level, she was given a ticket for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Thakur won the poll in 2014 but was denied a ticket by the party in 2019.

Nimuben Bambhaniya

Nimuben Bambhaniya, one of the three women candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to win the Lok Sabha elections in Gujarat, has been inducted into the Union cabinet as a minister of state. The 57-year-old defeated Aam Aadmi Party’s Umesh Makwana by a huge margin of 4.55 lakh votes in the Bhavnagar constituency. She served as the mayor of Bhavnagar for two terms between 2009-10 and 2015-18 and was the vice president of the BJP Mahila Morcha’s state unit between 2013 and 2021.

A former teacher, Bambhaniya joined the BJP in 2004 and entered electoral politics by contesting and winning the civic polls for three terms. She hails from the OBC Koli community. Her husband runs a school in Bhavnagar.