Atishi 17th in list of women CMs in the country, youngest for Delhi

A look at other women who have been CMs in various states across the country:

Sucheta Kripalani, Uttar Pradesh

India’s first woman CM and the state’s fourth, Kripalani was 55 years old when she replaced Chandra Bhanu Gupta to head UP in 1963.

Sucheta was founder chief of All India Mahila Congress and parted ways with the Congress in 1969 when the party split, siding with Morarji Desai. After that, she contested the 1971 Lok Sabha polls as a candidate of the Congress (Organisation), but lost. she died in 1974. Both Kripalanis were Constituent Assembly members.

Nandini Satpathy, Odisha

Satpathy was a Rajya Sabha member and a Union minister before returning to Odisha politics in 1972 after several top leaders left the Congress, including Biju Patnaik, and becoming the state’s first woman CM at the age of 41. She held office for just over four years.

She split from the Congress later and was a part of Jagjivan Ram’s Congress for Democracy (CFD) in the post-Emergency 1977 elections, and won the Dhenkenal Assembly seat. The author of several short stories and poems, and the winner of Sahitya Bharati Sammana for the Odia translation of famous novel Lajja, Nandini later returned to the Congress and was a member of the Odisha Assembly till 2000 and died in 2006.

Shashikala Kakodkar, Goa, Daman & Diu

She served as a minister in the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) government led by her father Dayanand Bandodkar in 1972 and became the first woman CM of the state at the age of 38 in 1973 after her father’s death.

Kakodkar was sworn in as CM for the second time in 1977 after leading the MGP to victory in 15 of the 30 seats and held the post until she resigned in 1979.

In the 1980 Lok Sabha elections, Kakodkar successfully campaigned for MGP candidate Sanyogita Rane Sardesai for the North Goa seat, thus enabling the latter to become the first woman to be elected as MP from the state.

Anwara Taimur, Assam

The state’s only woman and Muslim CM after Independence, Taimur assumed office at the age of 44 in December 1980. Her six-month tenure ended after the state was placed under President’s Rule.

After her stint as CM, she went on to serve as a minister in the state Cabinet between 1983 and 1985. She was a four-time MLA and has also served as a member of the Upper House. She died in 2020.

V N Janaki, Tamil Nadu

Not politically active while AIADMK founder and her husband M G Ramachandran was helming party affairs, Janaki assumed the CM’s chair at the age of 65 following his death in 1987.

She led the state for a brief period of 24 days – the shortest in Tamil Nadu’s history – before the Rajiv Gandhi-led Central government dismissed her government in February 1988 following clashes in the Tamil Nadu Assembly between her supporters and those of her successor J Jayalalithaa.

She quit politics in 1989 after warring factions of the AIADMK united and died in 1996.

J Jayalalithaa, Tamil Nadu

The AIADMK stalwart, who first won an Assembly election in 1989, served as the Leader of the Opposition in the Tamil Nadu Assembly before assuming the CM’s chair two years later at the age of 41, becoming the youngest person to helm the state.

In 1996, Jayalalithaa became the first woman CM of the state to serve a full term. She went on to become a five-time CM between 1991 and 2016, and passed away while in office.

Mayawati, Uttar Pradesh

Kanshi Ram’s successor, Mayawati first became CM in 1995 at the age of 39. She went on to serve as the CM of Uttar Pradesh four times.

Her first three terms between 1995 and 1997, when she ran the government in alliance with other parties like the Samajwadi Party (SP) and BJP, did not last their entire tenures but Mayawati led the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to majority in the 2007 Assembly elections and completed her term as CM.

She is the first UP CM to complete a five-year tenure and is the second longest serving CM of the state, only after Yogi Adityanath.

Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Punjab

Bhattal succeeded Harcharan Singh Brar to become the first woman CM of Punjab in November 1996 at the age of 51. Her stint in the state’s top post lasted only three months as the Congress was defeated in the subsequent 1997 Assembly elections.

She went on to serve as the president of the Punjab Congress and also as the Leader of the Congress Legislature Party. In 2004, Bhattal was made Deputy CM in the Cabinet led by Amarinder Singh, with whom she had sour relations.

Rabri Devi, Bihar

She assumed office as the first woman CM of Bihar in 1997 at the age of 42 after her husband and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad was forced to resign after his name cropped up in the fodder scam.

She went to serve three terms as CM between 1997 and 2005. She is a three-time MLA but in 2010, she lost both seats – Raghopur and Sonpur. She also unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Saran and lost to the BJP’s Rajiv Pratap Rudy. Till date, she is the only woman to hold the CM’s office in the state and currently serves as the Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council.

Sushma Swaraj, Delhi

Swaraj had served as a minister in Haryana, as an MP in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha and as a minister in the Union Cabinet before assuming the post of Delhi CM at the age of 46 in 1998.

Her tenure as CM lasted only 52 days, but she went on to serve as a minister in various BJP governments from 2000 and was the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha from 2009 to 2014. She was the Minister of External Affairs in the first Narendra Modi Cabinet and died in August 2019.

Sheila Dikshit, Delhi

The longest serving woman CM in the country with over 15 years in office, Dikshit first became Delhi CM in December 1998 at the age of 60 and continued to hold the post till 2013. In March 2014, she was appointed as Governor of Kerala after the Congress lost the Delhi Assembly polls but resigned and unsuccessfully contested the 2014 parliamentary polls from East Delhi.

Prior to becoming Delhi CM, Dikshit had served as a member of the Lok Sabha as well as the Union Cabinet under Rajiv Gandhi. Dikshit, the daughter-in-law of Congress stalwart Umashankar Dikshit, passed away in 2019.

Uma Bharti, Madhya Pradesh

She became the CM after leading the BJP to victory in the 2003 Assembly polls at the age of 44. Her tenure lasted eight months as she was forced to resign after she was named in connection with the 1994 Hubli riots.

Following her resignation, she floated the Bharatiya Janshakti Party in 2004 and rejoined the BJP in 2011 and was tasked with reviving the party in Uttar Pradesh. She was Union minister in Narendra Modi’s first tenure and was denied a Lok Sabha ticket in 2019. Bharti has been virtually sidelined in the party.

Vasundhara Raje, Rajasthan

A multiple-time MLA and MP, who has held several organisational positions in the BJP, Vasundhara Raje first became CM of Rajasthan in 2003 at the age of 50.

Born in the royal family of Scindias in Gwalior, she has twice served as the CM of Rajasthan. Though one of the frontrunners for the post following the BJP’s Assembly election victory last year, she was pipped by first-time MLA Bhajan Lal Sharma.

Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal

Banerjee had been a Lok Sabha MP as well as a Union Cabinet minister before assuming the CM’s chair for the first time in 2011 at the age of 56, ending the Left’s over three-decade rule in West Bengal, and has been helming the state since

Following her split with the Congress in 1997, Banerjee founded the Trinamool Congress with Mukul Roy and subsequently served in the Union Cabinets led by the BJP as well as the Congress.

Anandiben Patel, Gujarat

Patel at the age of 73 became the first woman CM of Gujarat in 2014, replacing Narendra Modi as he moved to Delhi as the Prime Minister.

In August 2016, she resigned citing she was turning 75 in a few months and was replaced by Vijay Rupani. She has served as a member of the Rajya Sabha and is a multiple-time MLA. In 2018, she was appointed as the Governor of Madhya Pradesh and currently serves as the Governor of Uttar Pradesh.

Mehbooba Mufti, Jammu and Kashmir

She became the first woman CM of the erstwhile state in 2016 at the age of 57 following her father and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) founder Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s death. Her tenure as the head of the PDP-BJP government lasted for just over two years, after which differences between the allies forced them to part way