A powerful tribal face of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who defied the Congress influence in the Sarguja region of Chhattisgarh was sworn in as a minister of state in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new cabinet.

The name of BJP vice-president Saroj Pandey, a Rajya Sabha member, was making rounds as one of the probables for a cabinet berth. 

However, Pandey herself took to Twitter to congratulate Singh, the first woman MP of Sarguja, on her new assignment and also shared a picture of them on her Facebook page.

Singh, a former Cabinet minister in the Raman Singh government, is known to be an aggressive tribal woman politician of Chhattisgarh.

Her latest achievement was to turn the tide in the BJP’s favor in Sarguja during the Lok Sabha election. It was the same region where the BJP had lost 14 seats in the Assembly election in December 2018.

Singh defeated senior Congress leader Khelsai Singh by over 1.5 lakh votes. She had lost to the Congress veteran in the 2013 Assembly election.