Savitri Jindal, India’s Richest Woman Wins Haryana Election As An Independent

New Delhi: Savitri Jindal, India’s richest woman, entered the poll arena in Haryana as an independent and won against the BJP by 18,941 votes.

The mother of BJP’s Kurukshetra MP Naveen Jindal, she was up against senior BJP leader and incumbent MLA Kamal Gupta.

The Jindal Group chairperson emeritus decided to contest as an independent from Hisar after she failed to get a BJP ticket. “People of Hisar are my family and it is they who wanted me to contest,” Jindal told news agency PTI after announcing her nomination. She said, if elected, she would strongly raise the voice of her constituents in the Vidhan Sabha.

With a net worth of $36.3 billion, Savitri Jindal stands as the fifth-richest Indian, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index released on September 28. She is the richest woman in the country, and also the only woman billionaire among India’s top 10 richest persons. After her husband, Om Prakash Jindal died in 2005, Savitri Jindal took the reins of the conglomerate, which is involved in steel production, power generation, mining, and port facilities.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour.

The 74-year-old has already represented the Hisar constituency as an MLA twice. She first represented Hisar in the Haryana Assembly in 2005 as a Congress MLA and was re-elected in 2009, later becoming a minister in the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government. After nearly two decades with the Congress, Savitri Jindal joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in March, following in the footsteps of her son Naveen Jindal.