Sitharaman hosts tea party Union Cabinet’s women members

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 11

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman hosted high tea for the women members of the recently revamped Union Cabinet on Sunday evening. BJP president later joined the 11 lady members of the Union Cabinet, a gesture that was appreciated by Sitharaman.

While Sitharaman and Smriti Irani are Cabinet Ministers, the other nine are Ministers of State.

Besides Sitharaman and Irani, the tea party also included Meenakshi Lekhi, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Anupriya Patel, Renuka Singh, Annapurna Devi, Pratima Bhoumik, Bharati Pawar, Shobha Karandlaje and Darshana Jardosh.

Though many of them are well known names, there are those who have made a mark in state politics such as Jardosh, the new Minister of State for Railways & Textiles. She reduced the last two polls in Surat to a no-contest by picking up 75 % of the votes. Annapurna Devi, the new MoS for Education, was a four term RJD MLA who crossed over to the BJP after losing the 2014 assembly polls. Pratima Bhoumik, the first Tripura resident and second woman from North East to be a Union Minister, stayed with the BJP through thick and thin since 1991 and finally won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections by a handsome margin.

Bharati Pravin Pawar, another MoS, is the daughter-in-law of a eight-term NCP MLA from Maharashtra. She had lost the 2014 Lok Sabha polls on a NCP ticket and then joined the BJP to successfully win the 2019 polls.

Anupriya Patel was the only non-BJP woman MoS to join the party. Chief of the Apna Dal that was launched by her father, Patel won her first election in 2012 in alliance with the pro-Muslim Peace Party but enetered into an alliance with the BJP which has fetched her the Lok Sabha seat in 2014 and 2019.