New Delhi: Smriti Irani was gunning for a fight with Rahul Gandhi in the Amethi Lok Sabha constituency.
Congress didn’t oblige, deciding to field from K L Sharma from the once-Congress bastion in Uttar Pradesh.
For BJP leaders, workers and supporters as well as most others, it was a foregone conclusion with the Union Minister for Women & Child Development expected to win hands down.
But when results were declared on June 4, Amethi threw up one of the biggest upsets of the 2024 elections. Irani lost to Sharma by a massive margin of 1.67 lakh votes.
Irani was unceremoniously dumped from the Union Cabinet, and all eyes were on Narendra Modi as to who he would choose as her successor.
Many speculated that Annapurna could be the chosen one after she was inducted into Modi’s Cabinet as a full minister on Sunday.
On Monday she was, indeed, given the Women & Child Development portfolio.
Not many had heard of 54-year-old Annapurna before the elections.
Well, she was forced to enter politics after her husband died in 1998, and has steadily risen through the ranks.
Considered to be BJP’s OBC face in Jharkhand, Annapurna won from Koderma Parliamentary constituency, routing nearest rival Vinod Kumar Singh (CPI-ML) by over 3.7 lakh votes.
She kicked off her political career by contesting — and winning — the Koderma 1998 by-election when the seat fell vacant following her husband’s death in an undivided Bihar on a ticket for Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD.
Since then, she has since won in the state Assembly polls four times — in 2000, 2004, 2005 and 2009 – as RJD candidate and also served as a Jharkhand state minister in 2012.
She was president of RJD’s Jharkhand unit from 2014 to 2019, when she defected to the BJP and contested Lok Sabha polls for the first time. She turned out to be a giantkiller, defeating BJP heavyweight and Jharkhand’s first CM Babulal Marandi in Koderma by a huge margin.
As she moves out of ‘home comfort’ to the national Capital, political observers would keep an eye on her to find out how she performs in her new role.
Hers’s the full list of Ministers with their allocated portfolios as released by President’s Secretariat:
