In the new Hemant Soren led government two women have managed to secure their place in the cabinet. Out of the four ministers from the Indian National Congress, two including Deepika Singh Pandey and Shilpi Neha Tirkey were also amongst the ones who were administered the oath of office by the Governor Santosh Gangwar in the State capital on Thursday.

A total of 11 ministers took the oath of office on December 5. This included as many as six ministers from Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, four from Congress and one from the Rashtriya Janta Dal.

Thirty one year old Shilpi Neha Tirkey, a two- time MLA from the Mandar assembly constituency joined the cabinet from the Congress. In the recently concluded Vidhan Sabha elections, Tirkey got as many as 135936 votes and defeated her rival Sunny Toppo from the Bharatiya Janata Party who got 113133 votes and won by a whopping margin of 22803 votes.

Her father Bandhu Tirkey who became an MLA on a Jharkhand Vikas Morcha ticket in the 2019 assembly elections, was sentenced to jail by the court which compelled him to leave the seat. When the by- elections were held in 2022, Shilpi who was fielded by the Congress got a total of 95486 votes and defeated her BJP opponent Gangotri Kujur who received 71776 votes.

Another Congress candidate to join the Soren government is 49- year old Deepika Singh Pandey. In the Hemant Soren 2.0 government, Singh was appointed as the Minister of Agriculture Animal Husbandry Cooperative Department and Disaster Management.

In the 2024 assembly elections, Singh won the Mahagma seat by defeating her counterpart Ashok Kumar from the BJP with a margin of 18194 votes. Singh who received a total of 112806 votes as against Kumar who got 94612, registered her victory for the second time in a row.

Hailing from a family of politicians, Singh’s mother was associated with the Congress for a long while her father- in- law Awadh Bihari Singh was a three- time MLA from the same political party.