NEW DELHI: Jharkhand BJP leader Annapurna Devi has been appointed as the new Minister for Women and Child Development as part of the NDA government’s third term.
According to an official statement, Savitri Thakur has been appointed as the new Minister of State in the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
With issues such as raising the legal marriage age for women, combating malnutrition among women and children and addressing women’s safety issues, the new ministers face a tough task.
Devi, 55, will succeed Smriti Irani in the role.
She began her political career by being elected to the Bihar Assembly in a by-election in 1998 and later served as Minister for Mines and Geology in the Reliant Rajya Sabha Party (RJD) government in the state of Bihar.
Devi served as a member of the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly from 2005 to 2014 and became a minister in the Jharkhand Cabinet in 2012, overseeing the ministries of Irrigation, Women and Child Welfare and Registration.
She joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and ran as the party’s candidate from Koderma. She defeated Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajtantrik)’s Babulal Marandi by a landslide margin of 455,000 votes.
In her latest victory, she defeated CPI(ML)L’s Vinod Kumar Singh by a margin of 3.77 lakh votes to retain her Koderma seat.
Devi’s influence extended beyond the mica belt of Koderma to the entire state, establishing her as a key figure in political circles.
In 2021, Devi, once a close aide of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, was sworn in as minister of state for education in the Union government on July 7.
She has now secured a seat in the Modi 3.0 government, in what is seen as a strategic move by the BJP to consolidate its sizable OBC vote base ahead of crucial state elections due later this year.
Thakur, 46, is a minister in the WCD ministry. She won the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections from the Dhar (Scheduled Tribe) constituency in Madhya Pradesh and was sworn in as Minister of State (MoS) in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on Sunday.
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Published June 10, 2024 16:40 IST
