Rashtrapati Bhavan hosted a lavish event Friday evening to officially install Nirmala Sitharaman and Annapurna Devi as cabinet ministers.

New Delhi: There are seven women in the 72-member council of ministers in the third Narendra Modi government, including two who hold cabinet positions. This is four less than the council of ministers that will be leaving. Rashtrapati Bhavan hosted a lavish event Friday evening to officially install Nirmala Sitharaman and Annapurna Devi as cabinet ministers.

While Ms. Sitharaman, a member of the Rajya Sabha, has previously held high-profile positions in the defense and finance ministries, Annapurna Devi, a former member of parliament from Koderma, has been elevated from the post of minister of state to cabinet minister. In the previous administration, she served as the junior minister of education.

The following women were also sworn in as ministers yesterday: Nimuben Bambhaniya, Anupriya Patel, Raksha Khadse, Savitri Thakur, and Shobha Karandlaje.

The head of BJP ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) is Anupriya Patel. In the first Narendra Modi government, she served as minister of state for health and family welfare. In Modi 2.0, she was appointed junior minister for trade and industry. In this election, the number of Lok Sabha seats held by her party decreased from two to one.

Raksha Khadse, a 37-year-old woman, is the daughter-in-law of Eknath Khadse, a prominent politician from Maharashtra. Ms Khadse, a three-time MP from Raver, has held positions in the Zila Parishad and as a sarpanch in the past.

Savitri Thakur, a two-time MP from Dhar, is another first-time minister to join Modi 3.0. Although she was the election winner in 2014, she was not included in the 2019 polls. She made a great comeback in 2024 and won the seat by more than two lakh votes. Ms. Thakur has also worked at the panchayat level for a long time.

Among the ministers from the second Narendra Modi government who have been kept in Modi 3.0 is Shobha Karandlaje, a two-time Karnataka BJP MP and former state minister. She has previously held positions in the Union government overseeing the agricultural, farmers’ welfare, and food processing industries.

Bhavnagar-born MP Nimuben Bhambaniya is fifty-seven years old. She was a teacher before becoming mayor of Bhavnagar and holding several positions in the BJP’s organizational hierarchy.