Delhi-educated Harini Amarasuriya is Sri Lanka’s new prime minister

Women’s activist Harini Amarasuriya, who graduated from Delhi and counts Arundhati Roy as her favourite Indian author, on Tuesday took oath as Sri Lanka’s prime minister, the first woman to hold the post in the island nation after Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1960.

Have you read our interview with Harini Amarasuriya? Here it's

The 54-year-old former academic, who was one of the most visible faces of the now ruling National People's Power (NPP) during the election campaign, was sworn in by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who had taken oath a day earlier.

Amarasuriya’s ministerial responsibilities

Amarasuriya has been assigned the portfolios of the minister of justice, education, labour, industries, science and technology, health and investment.

She replaced Dinesh Gunawardena, who resigned as the prime minister after Dissanayake, 55, led the NPP alliance to a spectacular victory in the presidential election.

Daughter of a homemaker mother and a tea plantation father, Amarasuriya is the first one to enter politics from her family.

Educated in Delhi, UK

Born and raised in cosmopolitan Colombo, she earned his first degree from the prestigious Hindu College in Delhi University before doing a doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh.

She was then a professor of sociology and anthropology for a full decade.

A prolific writer on women’s rights, Amarasuriya was one of the most recognized campaign faces during the election campaign when the leftwing Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP)-led NPP sought to widen its appeal from being a fringe political party.

A master speaker

She addressed innumerable indoor and outdoor meetings, taking the most difficult questions with confidence as she made it clear that the JVP had renounced violence for good and was firmly married to parliamentary politics.

Amarasuriya also played a key role during the campaign in convincing wary industrialists and business groups that the JVP and its Marxist leader Dissanayake could be trusted to run the island nation of 22 million people.

Other ministers

NPP MPs Vijitha Herath and Laxman Nipunarachchi, both confidants of Dissnayake, were also sworn in as cabinet ministers on Tuesday.

They would serve as the caretaker cabinet with the imminent dissolution of parliament that will lead to a snap parliamentary election in November or December.

Dissanayake was sworn in as Sri Lanka's ninth president on Sunday.