Indian politician Annapurna Devi Yadav has been inducted into Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s newly elected cabinet on Wednesday. Devi is among the 43 fresh faces who had been shortlisted for the new cabinet and took an oath this evening.

Devi joined politics in 1998 has been a four-time MLA from Jharkhand’s Koderma ever since. In the 2014 Assembly polls, she, however, lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party‘s (BJP) Neera Yadav.

Now, Devi is Bharatiya Janata Party‘s member of parliament from Kodarma. She was elected to the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly as a member of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). Devi ditched Lalu Prasad Yadav‘s RJD in the 2019 parliamentary election and joined the saffron camp after which she was appointed as an MP.

The saffron camp pitched Devi from the Koderma seat to take on Babulal Marandi, who was then the chief of JVM-P, which now stands defunct after the latter’s merger with the BJP.

Also Read: Cabinet reshuffle: Full list of 43 ministers taking oath

Annapurna Devi is also the national vice-president of the BJP. During her tenure as a RJD leader, she was appointed the state president of the party.

BJP’s bet on Devi, who is a prominent face in Jharkhand’s politics, worked wonders for the party as she crushed Marandi by a margin of over 4 lakh votes in the parliamentary elections.

Annapurna Devi’s husband was late Ramesh Prasad Yadav, who was also a politician and a minister in Rabri Devi’s cabinet. Rabri Devi is Lalu Prasad Yadav’s wife.

Also Read: Dr L Murugan: Two promotions in a year for BJP’s Tamil Nadu leader

Annapurna herself served as a minister of state in the Rabri Devi ministry in 2000. She was also sworn in as a cabinet minister in the Shibu Soren ministry. Other political portfolios that she carried in her 23 years of illustrious career were of Irrigation ministry and women and child welfare ministries in Bihar cabinet.

Apart from Devi, two members of Parliament from Jharkhand–Arjun Munda (Khunti) and Mukthar Abbas Naqvi (Rajya Sabha)  are already Union ministers, handling tribal and minority affairs respectively.