Lucknow, March 25 : Yogi Adityanath 2.0 government in Uttar Pradesh will have five women ministers, comprising a 10 pc share in the new ministry. While former Uttarkhand governor and state BJP vice president Baby Rani Maurya has been made a cabinet minister in Yogi Adityanath’s cabinet. Gulab Devi has been sworn in as Minister of State with independent charge. Along with this, three women have been sworn in as ministers of state, they are Pratibha Shukla, Rajni Tiwari and Vijay Laxmi Gautam. In the Yogi Adityanath 1.0 government there were just three women ministers in the total strength of 54. The highest ever women representation in the Uttar Pradesh government has been 16.6 % during Veer Bahadur Singh’s government in the ninth assembly when there were six women ministers among the 36 total ministers. Party leaders here on Friday said Baby Rani Maurya was given ticket by the BJP in the 2022 elections as a Dalit face from the Agra Rural Assembly seat. Veteran leader Baby Rani Maurya defeated BSP candidate Kiran Prabha Kesari by more than 76,608 votes. Maurya had replaced BJP MLA Hemlata Diwakar Kushwaha from the seat. Gulab Devi took oath as Minister of State with independent charge. She won from Chandausi assembly seat in Sambhal district. Gulab Devi has become MLA for the fifth time. She defeated SP candidate Vimlesh Kumari by 35420 votes. Gulab Devi, who was a teacher, has three daughters. She became an MLA in the year 2002 and 2017 as well. Pratibha Shukla has been made Minister of State in the Yogi cabinet. She had won from Akbarpur-Raniyan assembly seat in Kanpur Dehat district. Akbarpur Rania assembly seat is considered as a Dalit majority seat. In 2017, Pratima Shukla was in the fray on a BJP ticket. She left the BSP and joined the BJP before the elections. In this election, Pratibha defeated Neeraj Singh of SP by a margin of 27,000 votes. Vijay Lakshmi Gautam has been sworn in as the Minister of State in the Yogi Adityanath government. Vijay Laxmi Gautam, MLA from Salempur assembly constituency, is a resident of Deoria Khas locality of Deoria city. She has been the president of Deoria Nagar of BJP Mahila Morcha. In 2012, the BJP fielded her from the Salempur assembly constituency, but she lost the election to the SP candidate. Before the 2022 assembly elections, the BJP made Vijay Laxmi Gautam the party’s candidate by denying ticket of MLA Kali Prasad. She is very active socially and politically and is also as working as a Kotedar. BJP MLA from Shahabad Assembly Rajni Tiwari has been MLA for three consecutive terms. In the year 2008, she became an MLA for the first time in the by-election from the then Bilgram Vidhan Sabha constituency. She took over the political legacy of her husband, former MLA Late Upendra Tiwari. In this assembly elections, she has made a record by becoming an MLA from Shahabad for the fourth time. She won by defeating SP candidate Asif Khan Babbu by 6873 votes. This is the fourth victory of BJP candidate. Prior to this, she was elected MLA from Bilgram in 2008 by-elections, Sawayajpur in 2012 and Shahabad in 2017. A total of 42 women have successful won the elections in the 18th assembly. Surprisingly in 2017 elections too, 42 women MLAs were too elected in the 17th Assembly elections. It is worth noting that a total of 4442 candidates had entered the fray, out of which 561 were women. MB RKM