Women ministers find strength in numbers in PM Narendra Modi's Cabinet reshuffle

According to a PTI report, seven more women members, including Meenakashi Lekhi, Shobha Karandlaje and Anupriya Singh Patel, joined the council of ministers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 7, taking the overall female strength to 11 which is one of the highest.

The seven women who took oath as ministers of state were Shobha Karandlaje, Darshana Vikram Jardosh, Meenakashi Lekhi, Annpurna Devi, Pratima Bhoumik, Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar and Apna Dal's Anupriya Singh Patel. Among them, three are first-time MPs while Patel is making a comeback to the council of ministers as she was the Union Minister of State for Health under Prime Minister Modi earlier.

Nirmala Sitharaman will continue at the North Block to steer the USD 3 trillion economy out of the woods amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a post-graduate in economics from Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University and an MPhil in international relations.

Fifty-two-year-old Pratima Bhowmik, popularly known as 'Pratima di' Wednesday scripted history, becoming the only politician from Tripura to be sworn-in as a central minister. Bhowmick is a first time MP, elected from West Tripura constituency in the last general elections. A graduate in Science from Tripura Women's College, she has always maintained a low profile despite being an active politician for long.

Meenakshi Lekhi has for long articulated and advocated BJP’s policies and programmes while taking on her political opponents before she found a place in the Union Council of Ministers. A law graduate of Delhi University, she has taken up various important issues such as permanent commission for women officers in the armed forces as a lawyer.