Five women feature in Yogi Adityanath's cabinet 2.0 in Uttar Pradesh – including prominent leaders like Baby Rani Maurya and Gulab Devi.
The new cabinet has two deputy chief ministers, 16 cabinet ministers, 14 Ministers of State (MoS) with independent charge, and 20 MoS.
Here are the five women in the Adityanath cabinet:
Baby Rani Maurya
Baby Rani Maurya won the Agra Rural seat with a huge margin. This area is considered a bastion of BSP Supremo Mayawati. Maurya entered politics in 1990 and has been the first woman mayor of Agra from 1995 to 2000. She became a member of the National Women's Commission (NWC) in 2002. She was also bestowed with Uttar Pradesh Ranta Puruskar in 1997, and Nari Ratna Puruskar in 1998.
She fought her first Assembly elections in 2007 from the Etmadpur Assembly seat but lost. She was appointed as the governor of Uttarakhand in 2018 but she resigned from the post in 2021 to fight the Assembly elections.
Baby Rani Maurya.
(File Photo: IANS)
Gulab Devi
Gulab Devi has been sworn in as MoS – independent charge in Yogi Cabinet 2.0. This is an promotion as she was earlier an MoS in Yogi Cabinet. She won the election from the Chandausi seat in Sambhal district.
Pratibha Shukla
She is a Brahmin face in Yogi Cabinet 2.0 and included as an MoS. She is a second-term MLA from the Akbarpur-Raniya Assembly constituency.
Rajni Tiwari
She won the Shahabad Assembly constituency in Hardoi district for a second consecutive term. Tiwari defeated Asif Khan of BSP.
Vijay Laxmi Gautam
Vijay Laxmi Gautam has won the election from the Salempur Assembly constituency in the Deoria district. She began her political career in 1992 and has been president of the women's wing of the district unit in Deoria.
In 2012, she was fielded from Salempur but lost the election to SP candidate Manbodh Prasad. In 2017, she revolted against BJP after being denied a ticket and fought the election on SP ticket. But, she lost the election to Kaliprasad of BJP. In February, she came back to the BJP fold and has now defeated Manbodh Prasad of SP to become MLA for the first time.
(Translated from Quint Hindi by Arvind Singh.)
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