That the saffron party’s women were making their presence felt was evident at the BJP National Council meet in Delhi earlier this year in January, when Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, hailed by party faithful as “a nationalist in the Savarkar mould”, found more than a match in Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. While other CMs held forth on their states’ achievements, Modi spoke of national affairs. A slighted Raje then roared: “Koi yeh nahin samjhe ki hum kisi se kam hain (we are second to none).”

Similarly, after the recent BJP victory in Karnataka, when Arun Jaitley was being feted for crafting the win, Sushma Swaraj, a key campaigner in the state, is learnt to have pointedly asked the leadership if she too hadn’t played a role. Advani was profuse in his praise for Swaraj.

Clearly, the women in the party are asserting their identity and their position just got stronger with their numbers in the National Executive going up. Here are profiles of recent inductees who now make up one-third of the party’s policy-making body.

Jaywantibehn Mehta
Vice-president
Active for four-and-half decades in the party, Jaywantibehn Mehta has become party vice-president for the second time. A former Union minister of state for power, Mehta is your grandmother-figure. Known as a politician with a human face, she once shifted one of her aides, an IAS officer her son’s age, to her residence in Delhi when he was diagnosed with cancer so that he could be looked after well. She can justifiably claim to have looked after Mumbai (South) as well. But for Young Turk Milind Deora’s charm, the constituency of the rich and the dispossessed (in equal measure) would not have swayed the Congress way. A Gujarati in Mumbai politics, she is in the Ram Naik mould—every inch BJP. Pity, the BJP could think of only a ceremonial post for one of the most respected names in the party.

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