Sushma Swaraj questions decades of Congress rule over paucity of women Union Ministers, compares it with the Modi sarkar

Observing the gender disparity in the previous Congress cabinets, Union Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj has tweeted that the Modi government was the first such cabinet which comprised of six women cabinet ministers with two women, as members of the Cabinet Committee on Security. She said that she had shared this information while addressing a Mahila Sammelan in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday.

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In a series of tweets, she listed the women cabinet ministers in the previous governments -

• Jawaharlal Nehru  cabinet 1 (1952-57) - Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur
• Jawaharlal Nehru  cabinet 2 (1957-62) - None
• Jawaharlal Nehru  cabinet 3 (1962-64)- Dr. Sushila Nayyar
• Lal Bahudar Shastri cabinet (1964-66) - Dr. Sushila Nayyar
• Indira Gandhi cabinet (1966-67) - Dr. Sushila Nayyar
• Indira Gandhi cabinets (1967-71), (1971-77) and (1980-84) - None
• Rajiv Gandhi cabinet (1984-89) - Mohsina Kidwai

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In contrast the current Modi cabinet has six women cabinet ministers namely: Sushma Swaraj (Ministry of External affairs), Nirmala Sitharaman (Ministry of Defence), Smriti Irani (Ministry of Textile), Maneka Gandhi (Ministry of Women and Child Development), Harsimrat Kaur Badal (Ministry of Food Processing) and Najma Heptulla (Ministry of Minority Affairs [2014-16])

While questioned by a Twitter user about Nandini Satpathy, Swaraj clarified that Satpathy had been a Minister of state in the Indira Gandhi cabinet.

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