Meet Ritu Khanduri, first women speaker of Uttarakhand Assembly

Ritu Khanduri, Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) leader, was elected as the Speaker of the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly on Saturday, becoming the state Assembly's first female Speaker.

Khanduri will become the fifth Speaker of Uttarakhand's Legislative Assembly. She will succeed BJP's Premchand Aggarwal, whose term ended on March 10. 

The newly-elected Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, Pushkar Singh Dhami, congratulated Khanduri and stated that the state Assembly would create new history under her leadership.  

ANI reported, quoting Dhami that he congratulated Ritu Khanduri for being elected as the first woman speaker of the state Assembly. She will run the House well, and Uttarakhand Assembly will create new history under her leadership. 

Ritu Khanduri began her political career by winning the Yamkeshwar seat in the 2017 Uttarakhand Assembly elections. She was appointed to the State Committee on Information and Technology at the time.

In the 2022 Assembly elections, she competed from the Kotdwar constituency and won after defeating Congress Surendra Singh Negi. 

Baby Rani Maurya, former Governor of Uttarakhand Friday, was sworn in as a Cabinet Minister in the new Yogi Adityanath Cabinet in UP. 

In the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, she contested from the Agra rural Assembly seat. Maurya was also Agra's first female mayor.

Baby Maurya is one of five female ministers sworn in on Friday. A total of 52 ministers, including Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, took the oath of office. The other female ministers who took the oath were Gulab Devi, Pratibha Shukla, Rajani Tiwari, and Vijay Laxmi Gautam.

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• Bharatiya Janata Party
• Pushkar Singh Dhami
• Ritu Khanduri
• Uttarakhand
• first female Speaker