Women MLAs struggle to break glass ceiling as Gujarat BJP keeps clipping wings

The Gujarat cabinet, which recently underwent a reshuffle with the appointment of 26 ministers, despite having three women faces, continues to remain a male-dominated terrain, with the role of women limited to junior roles.

Limited to junior posts, specific portfolios

The three women MLAs in the Bhupendra Patel-led cabinet are: first-time MLA from Jamnagar North Rivaba Jadeja, Asarwa MLA Darshana Vaghela, and the party’s senior leader Manisha Vakeel from Vadodara City constituency. However, none of the trio was given a cabinet minister’s post.

Jadeja was named Minister of State (MoS) of Primary, Secondary, and Adult Education, Vaghela was named MoS of Urban Development and Housing, and Vakeel was announced as the MoS of Women and Child Welfare (independent charge), Social Justice and Empowerment.

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Besides relegating women to junior posts, the BJP in Gujarat has never given them cabinet posts beyond the portfolio of women and child development, point out political observers.

An example is Bhanuben Babariya, who was a cabinet minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, Women and Child Welfare in the previous cabinet.

Anandiben Patel an exception

“Typically, the Gujarat government has had one or a maximum of two women in the cabinet, but they have been limited to the portfolio of women and child development. The only exception has been Anandiben Patel, who handled portfolios like revenue and urban development and later went on to become the state’s first chief minister,” says Indira Hirway, an author and sociologist.

Hirway says other than Patel, Gujarat has not yet seen a woman leader in either the BJP or the Congress who got the chance to occupy top posts.

“In fact, despite performing better than their male counterparts, women leaders have always been ignored within the BJP,” she adds.

Rivaba Jadeja's rise to fame

Thirty-five-year-old Rivaba Jadeja shot to fame first when she married cricketer Ravindra Jadeja in 2017. In 2018, she joined the Karni Sena and became popular when she actively took part in protesting against Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film, Padmaavat. The same year, she was appointed head of the Karni Sena’s women’s wing in Gujarat.

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In 2019, she joined the BJP, and three years later, in 2022, she got a chance to contest the Assembly polls from Jamnagar, her home district.

Rivaba, who was chosen over sitting MLA and BJP’s veteran Dharmendrasinh Jadeja, won by over 50,000 votes, laying the protests by supporters of the former MLA to rest.

Since then, she has been socially active through her charitable trust, Matrushakti, which advocates and facilitates the education of the girl child.

Won laurels for flood-relief, social work

Rivaba once again came into the spotlight in 2023 when Cyclone Biporjoy hit the state. While the BJP had asked all its MLAs from Saurashtra to oversee relief and rescue operations in their respective areas, Jadeja went out of her way to assure shelter and food to the rescued people in the affected neighbouring districts.

In 2024 and 2025, her relief efforts post the floods in Saurashtra were praised by the Chief Minister Patel. She also received praise from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for helping open Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana accounts, a government savings scheme for girl children, in post offices.

Despite her swift rise in the state’s politics, Rivaba does not intend to be in the limelight and wants to go back to her social work in her constituency.

“I have learnt from the men around me in politics that when someone works hard on the ground, it is acknowledged sooner or later. I am happy to have been trusted with a portfolio of education that is related to the work I have been doing for some years in Jamnagar and Rajkot,” Jadeja told The Federal.

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From Dalit quarters to power corridors

Like Rivaba, 53-year-old Darshana Vaghela is also new to electoral politics. The MLA from Asarwa, Ahmedabad, belongs to the Valmiki community, which is considered the lowest in social hierarchy amongst the Dalit community.

Vaghela, a former school principal, was also associated with the Safai Kamdar Association affiliated to the BJP. She was a municipal councillor and served as a two-time mayor of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation before getting a ticket in the 2022 state polls.

“Vaghela comes from a very ordinary background and is a first-time politician from her family. Her rise is not just significant as she is a woman leader in an otherwise male-dominated BJP, but also because she hails from one of the most marginalised communities, Valmiki, who are still considered untouchables by many,” says Manishi Jani, a political analyst and educationist based in Ahmedabad.

“It will be interesting to see how she navigates her role in the cabinet in a state where both her caste and gender is a social drawbacks,” Jani told The Federal.

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Illustrious career, resilient strain

Fifty-year-old Manisha Vakeel, another Dalit to have made it to the BJP’s cabinet, however, unlike her two women counterparts, is a senior BJP leader and three-time MLA from Vadodara City. She has also been named a MoS for the second time.

Vakeel, a teacher by profession, was brought into electoral politics in 2012 by her father-in-law Dahyabhai Rohit, a former BJP MLA from Karjan. She won the Assembly polls in 2012 from Vadodara City and, since then, has retained the seat.

Although Vakeel has not been in the limelight much since she entered mainstream politics, her work on the ground gained her the proximity of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

Whether it is during the lethal second wave of the COVID pandemic or the massive floods in Vadodara or the issue of overflowing Vishwamitri river, Vakeel was seen on the ground handling the situation despite public ire against her party.

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“It is no different for men or women leaders in the BJP. If you don’t perform, you will be sacked. I am doing what every BJP worker is expected to do – be active in your area and keep the momentum alive,” Vakeel tells The Federal.

Not given enough credit

While the accomplishments of the above women MLA is proof that the BJP picks them carefully, the party ironically has a history of replacing its women leaders at the peak of their performance.

In 2014, former Vadodara MP Ranjanben Bhatt was fielded for the Vadodara Lok Sabha bypoll after Prime Minister Modi vacated the seat and switched to Varanasi.

Bhatt, a deputy mayor of Vadodara, had won the bypoll by 3,29,000 votes. But her win was credited to Modi’s popularity in the seat, who had won it by 5,70,000 votes. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, she retained the seat by a margin of 5,89,000 votes, surpassing Amit Shah’s victory margin of 5,57,000 in Gandhinagar.

Yet she was replaced deftly in the 2024 parliamentary polls after a few local BJP leaders accused her of being ‘non-functional’.

Ungraceful ouster

Former Surat MP Darshana Jardosh, a tall BJP leader, had a similar political career, which came to an abrupt halt in 2024. She had taken over the seat from BJP stalwart Kashiram Rana in 2009 and had retained it since then.

Jardosh’s winning margin of 7,95,651 in the 2019 parliamentary polls was one of the biggest in the country. In 2014, she won by securing 76.6 per cent of the total votes in her seat, making her the second woman after India Gandhi to achieve more than 70 per cent of the vote share in parliamentary polls.

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However, despite her performance, she was dropped in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and replaced by Mukesh Dalal, who was elected unopposed after all candidates withdrew their nominations.

Male-dominated terrain

Hirway says the saffron party, despite grooming its women leaders well and despite their remarkable performance in electoral politics, doesn’t flinch to replace them with male counterparts.

“Despite having a woman as the chief minister, the state’s political scenario largely remains male dominated. Even the first woman chief minister (Anandiben) Patel had to vacate her winning seats for male leaders of her party. She was groomed personally by stalwarts like Keshubhai Patel and Murli Manohar Joshi, but that didn’t help her gain importance over other male leaders,” says Hirway.

“Though a leader from North Gujarat, she won her first election from Mandal in Central Gujarat, and her second and third wins were from Patan in North Gujarat, before she had to vacate her winning seat once again. She contested from Ghatlodiya to register a fourth win as an MLA in 2012 before she became the chief minister in 2014,” Hirway adds.

The social analyst says that on the ground, the role of female leaders has just been ‘tokenism’ – or to fill the vacant space left by male leaders till an “apt replacement” comes by.

“A majority of the women who have been in mainstream politics in Gujarat have been supported by their families or come from a political background and were chosen as a replacement for a male leader of the family. On the ground, women leaders’ participation in policy-making or governance has mostly been limited to tokenism. It remains to be seen if the three women ministers can carve a space for themselves in the BJP government,” she added.