Smriti Irani, Nirmala Sitharaman, other women ministers take oath as part of PM Narendra Modi’s cabinet
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Cabinet Ministers take oath, including Smriti Irani, Nirmala Sitharaman, Sadhvi Jyoti, and Harismrat Badal.
The 17th Lok Sabha has 78 women MPs in the house - the largest till date. Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier today, in a grand ceremony, at the Rashtrapati Bhawan took oath.
The PM also announced his list of Cabinet Ministers who took oath before some of the top government brass, including the opposition and some of the top business leaders of the country.
Including the PM, there are 56 members who were sworn in today. There are six women cabinet ministers of which four have served previously as Union Cabinet Ministers. These include Nirmala Sitharaman, Smriti Zubin Irani, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, and Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti.
Nirmala Sitharaman has served in the last cabinet. She is the second female Defence Minister of India, and has also served as a spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Dal Party.
Smriti Zubin Irani stole the thunder this election since she beat Rahul Gandhi, the President of Indian National Congress, in Amethi, which has been a Congress stronghold for decades. In 2014, she had lost to Rahul Gandhi. She joined BJP in 2003 and has been a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat. Irani was the Union Minister of Human Resource Development, but due to controversy, she was handed over to the Ministry of Textiles under the Modi government.
Harsimrat Kaur Badal has previously served as the Union Minister of Food and Processing in the Modi government. She is back in the cabinet and will be managing the same portfolio as before. A member of the Shiromani Akali Dal, she contested from Bhatinda. Her husband Sukhbir Singh Badal is also a politician and has served as the Deputy CM of Punjab. She started her political career in 2009 when she stood for the general election. In 2014 she was re-elected from Bhatinda.
Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti won the 2014 general elections on a BJP ticket. She has served as the Minister of State for Food Processing Industries since 2014.
The two fresh faces on the list are Debasree Chaudhuri and Renuka Singh Saruta.
Debasree Chaudhuri is one of the newly elected women MPs who won the 2019 general election from Raiganj, West Bengal. She is a member of the BJP.
Renuka Singh Saruta is a member of the BJP. She was a member of Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly from 2003-2008.
Sushma Swaraj who took a backseat this elections will be missed. She served as the External Affairs Minister.
While the list of the Cabinet Ministers has been announced and they have taken their oaths, we wait to see which portfolios will be assigned to them.
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