Biography

Smriti Zubin Irani (née Malhotra; Hindi pronunciation: [smɾɪt̪ɪ iːɾɑːniː] born 23 March 1976) is an Indian politician and former actress, fashion model and television producer. She has been Minister of Women and Child Development since 2019, and also Minister of Minority Affairs since 2022 (as the first non-Muslim to hold the position). She previously served as Minister of Human Resource Development (2014 to 2016), Minister of Textiles (2016 to 2021), and Minister of Information and Broadcasting (2017 to 2018). She was the youngest minister (at age 43) in prime minister Narendra Modi's second ministry in 2019.She has been a member of parliament since 2011, serving in the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat from 2011 to 2019 and since 2019 serving as a member of the Lok Sabha from the Amethi constituency in Uttar Pradesh. A prominent leader within the Bharatiya Janata Party, she was the National President of the BJP Mahila Morcha (the party's women's wing) from 2010 to 2013. In the 2019 elections she gained the Amethi constituency by defeating opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, then-president of the Indian National Congress, whose family members had represented the constituency for much of the previous four decades. Irani has a diverse family background, with her paternal family including Punjabi and Maharashtrian heritage while her maternal family has a Bengali heritage, and she speaks several Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, and Punjabi.