“The women who are sitting here are here because of their own capability and sincere hard work. They are not here because they are somebody’s wife, daughter or sister. And it is a true example of how women leadership has to be given their due chance in this country,” said Vanathi Srinivasan, the National President of BJP Mahila Morcha (Women’s Wing).
“The Women” Vanathi was speaking about are the ones who were made Union Ministers following the cabinet expansion. The central government made the Cabinet expansion recently and installed 36 new faces. There are 78 Ministers in the expanded ministry, and 11 among them are women, which is a record. Out of the 11, 2 are senior ministers.
Vanathi Srinivasan organized a felicitation ceremony in Delhi to honor Union ministers Shobha Karandlaje, Darshana Jardosh, Meenakshi Lekhi, Annpurna Devi Yadav, Pratima Bhoumik, Dr. Bharati Pravin, Niranjan Jyoti, Renuka Singh, and 2 Cabinet Ministers – Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani.
J.P.Nadda, National President, BJP presided over this event. Dushyant Kumar, National General Secretary, BJP was also present. (Since it was a party related felicitation program, Anupriya Patel, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry of India, who is from an alliance party was not called.)
During the event, Vanathi underlined that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has shown how women empowerment should be. She said that for a long time, BJP has given 33% reservation in organizational responsibilities for women, and in independent India, a good number of women leaders have been given positions in the Ministry as ministers when BJP was in power.
She added that the PM always thinks about the development of women and announces plans that would pave way for women empowerment. Vanathi stated that Mahila Morcha is trying to reach crores of women in different parts of the country and take these schemes (Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, Sukanya Samriddhi, Jan Dhan Account) to them.
Vanathi also addressed the gender gap that prevails in politics. She said it is present all over the world, and India is no exception for that but BJP is sincerely trying its best to motivate, encourage and bring a lot of women into the party, give them training and encouragement to serve the people and recognize them by giving important positions to execute their responsibility.
She reinforced her statement by pointing out that these female ministers today have risen to such positions only out of their hard work and commitment towards the development of society and the party, and BJP is a party that honours hard work.
Following her JP Nadda, Ministers Smriti Irani and Nirmala Sitharaman addressed the members of Mahila Morcha. Earlier Vanathi welcomed all the ministers in their respective mother tongues, honoured them with shawls and gave mementoes made by traditional artisans.