Sushma Swaraj

Once the youngest Cabinet minister, now a veteran

External Affairs Minister

 

Date & year of birth: Feb 14, 1952

Consituency: Vidisha
Whether represented constituency before: 2009

Ministerial charge held earlier: Union I&B mjnister 1996); Union minister for I&B  and telecom (1998); Union I&B minister (Sept 2000-Jan 2003); Union minister for health & family welfare and parliamentary affairs (Jan 2003-May 2004)

Sushma Swaraj, former Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, has good administrative experience. She had handled many important portfolios. Swaraj’s big task this time, besides being a part of the government, will be to build bridges with the man who is, in a sense, her boss, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She has been critical of him and some of his decisions. This may mean that she will not have his ears as much as young women leaders such as Smriti Irani.
 

When Nitin Gadkari resigned as the president of the BJP, Swaraj was asked to replace him; she declined. That might have been a tactical error: Had she taken the job then, it would have been Swaraj leading the party into victory. Who knows what might have been in store.
 

Swaraj is respected in party circles and known widely outside it. If the BJP has a serious feminist, it has to be Swaraj. It was after a campaign she fought long and hard within the organisation that a third of all party posts were reserved for women. Having grown up in a Sangh family, Swaraj began her political journey from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad or ABVP. She married Swaraj Kaushal, a socialist, and came in contact with many socialist leaders.