President Droupadi Murmu administers the oath of office to BJP leader Raksha Khadse during the swearing-in ceremony of new Union government, at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.
Credit: PTI Photo
Mumbai: Just after the phone call came to Raksha Khadse, she broke down. At at the age of 37, she had faced many challenges - and she could not control her emotions.
Raksha Khadse is a three-time Lok Sabha MP from Raver in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra.
In the 2024 general elections, she defeated Shriram Dayaram Patil of NCP (SP).
From being a Sarpanch to becoming a Central minister, the journey has been interesting.
Raksha’s inclusion into the Narendra Modi government signals that her father-in-law Eknath Khadse, who is currently an MLC of Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP) would soon return to BJP, this parent party - that he had left owing to differences with BJP’s pointsperson Devendra Fadnavis.
Eknath Khadse hails from Muktainagar in Jalgaon and belongs to the Leva-Patil OBC community. Eknath Khadse’s daughter Rohini Khadse is the women wing chief of NCP (SP).
Raksha Khadse was born Priyanka Patel at Khetia in Madhya Pradesh on 13 May 1987.
She has completed BSc (Computer Science).
Her husband Nikhil Khadse passed away on May 1, 2013.
From 2010-2012, she was the Sarpanch of Kothali Gram Panchayat and from 2012-2014, she served as Member of Jalgaon Zilla Parishad. Having learnt the first lessons of politics from her father-in-law, who was part of the teams of Pramod Mahajan and Gopinath Munde, she got a big break in 2014, when she was just 26, to contest the Lok Sabha seat, from where she created a hattrick this time.