Sushma Swaraj

Sushma Swaraj (pronunciation ) (14 February 1953 - 6 August 2019) was an Indian politician and a former Supreme Court lawyer. A senior leader of Bharatiya Janata Party, Swaraj served as the Minister of External Affairs of India from 26 May 2014 to 30 May 2019; she was the second woman to hold the office, after Indira Gandhi. She had been elected seven times as a Member of Parliament and three times as a Member of the Legislative Assembly. At the age of 25 in 1977, she became the youngest cabinet minister of Indian state of Haryana. She also served as 5th Chief Minister of Delhi from 13 October 1998 to 3 December 1998.

In the 2014 Indian general election, she won the Vidisha constituency in Madhya Pradesh for a second term, retaining her seat by a margin of over 400,000 votes. She became the Minister of External Affairs in the union cabinet on 26 May 2014. Swaraj was called India's 'best-loved politician' by the US daily Wall Street Journal. Sushma Swaraj decided not to contest the 2019 Indian general election due to health reasons as she was recovering a kidney transplant and "save herself from dust and stay safe from infection" and hence did not join the Modi Ministry in 2019.

Sushma Swaraj (née Sharma) was born on 14 February 1953 at Ambala Cantt, Haryana, to Hardev Sharma and Shrimati Laxmi Devi. Her father was a prominent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh member. Her parents hailed from Dharampura area of Lahore, Pakistan. She was educated at Sanatan Dharma College in Ambala Cantonment and earned a bachelor's degree with majors in Sanskrit and Political Science. She studied law at Punjab University, Chandigarh. A state-level competition held by the Language Department of Haryana saw her winning the best Hindi Speaker award for three consecutive years.

In 1973, Swaraj started practice as an advocate in the Supreme Court of India.

Swaraj began her political career with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad in the 1970s. Her husband, Swaraj Kaushal, was closely associated with the socialist leader George Fernandes and Sushma Swaraj became a part of George Fernandes's legal defence team in 1975. She actively participated in Jayaprakash Narayan's Total Revolution Movement. After the Emergency, she joined the Bharatiya Janata Party. Later, she became a national leader of the BJP.

She was a member of the Haryana Legislative Assembly from 1977 to 1982, acquiring the Ambala Cantonment assembly seat at the age of 25, and then again from 1987 to 1990. In July 1977, she was sworn in as a Cabinet Minister in the Janata Party Government headed by then Chief Minister Devi Lal. She became State President of Janata Party (Haryana) in 1979, at the age of 27 years. She was Education Minister of Haryana state in the Bharatiya Janata Party–Lok Dal coalition government during the period of 1987 to 1990.

Chief Minister of Delhi

After a tenure in national level politics, in October 1998 she resigned from the Union Cabinet to take over as the first female Chief Minister of Delhi. However, the BJP had lost the Assembly elections because of rising prices and inflation. She resigned from her Assembly seat and returned to national politics.

In April 1990, she was elected as a member of the Rajya Sabha and remained there until she was elected to the 11th Lok Sabha from South Delhi constituency in 1996.

Swaraj was elected to the 11th Lok Sabha from South Delhi constituency in April 1996 elections. She was Union Cabinet Minister for Information and Broadcasting during the 13-day government of PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1996.

Union Minister I&B & Telecommunications

She was re-elected to 12th Lok Sabha from South Delhi Parliamentary constituency for a second term in March 1998. Under the second PM Vajpayee Government, she was sworn in as Union Cabinet Minister for Information and Broadcasting with additional charge of the Ministry of Telecommunications from 19 March 1998 to 12 October 1998. Her most notable decision during this period was to declare film production as an industry, which made the Indian film industry eligible for bank finance. She also started community radio at universities and other institutions.

In September 1999, BJP nominated Swaraj to contest against the Congress party's national President Sonia Gandhi in the 13th Lok Sabha election, from the Bellary constituency in Karnataka, which had always been retained by Congress politicians since the first Indian general election in 1951–52. During her campaign, she addressed public meetings in the local Kannada language. She secured 358,000 votes in just 12 days of her election campaign. However, she lost the election by a 7% margin.

Minister for Information and Broadcasting

She returned to Parliament in April 2000 as a Rajya Sabha member from Uttar Pradesh. She was reallocated to Uttrakhand when the new state was carved out of Uttar Pradesh on 9 November 2000. She was inducted into the Union Cabinet as Minister for Information and Broadcasting, a position she held from September 2000 until January 2003.

Union Health Minister

She was Minister of Health, Family Welfare and Parliamentary Affairs from January 2003 until May 2004, when the National Democratic Alliance Government lost the general election.

As Union Health Minister, she set up six All India Institute of Medical Sciences at Bhopal (MP), Bhubaneshwar (Odisha), Jodhpur (Rajasthan), Patna (Bihar), Raipur (Chhattisgarh) and Rishikesh (Uttrakhand).

Swaraj was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha for third term in April 2006 from Madhya Pradesh state. She served as the Deputy leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha till April 2009.

Leader of Opposition, 15th Lok Sabha

She won the 2009 election for the 15th Lok Sabha from the Vidisha Lok Sabha constituency in Madhya Pradesh by the highest margin of over 400,000 votes. Sushma Swaraj became Leader of Opposition in the 15th Lok Sabha in place of Lal Krishna Advani on 21 December 2009 and retained this position till May 2014 when in 2014 Indian general election her party got a major victory.

Minister of External Affairs

Sushma Swaraj at 73rd United Nations General Assembly in New York

Swaraj has served as the Indian Minister of External Affairs under Prime Minister Narendra Modi from May 2014 to May 2019. She was responsible for implementing the foreign policy of Narendra Modi. She is only the second woman to hold this position after Indira Gandhi.

In 1977, she became the youngest ever Cabinet Minister in the country at 25 years of age. In 1979, she became State President of Janata Party, Haryana State at the young age of 27. Sushma Swaraj was the first female Spokesperson of a national political party in India. She has many firsts to her credit as BJP's first female Chief Minister, Union Cabinet Minister, general secretary, Spokesperson, Leader of Opposition and Minister of External Affairs. She is the Indian Parliament's first and the only female MP honoured with the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award. She has contested 11 direct elections from four states. She has served as the President of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan in Haryana for four years. On 19 February 2019 Ms. Swaraj accepted the prestigious Grand Cross of Order of Civil Merit, which was conferred by the Spanish government in recognition of India's support in evacuating its citizens from Nepal during the earthquake in 2015.

During the times of Emergency, on 13 July 1975, Sushma Swaraj married Swaraj Kaushal, a peer and fellow advocate at the Supreme Court of India. The Emergency movement brought together the couple, who then teamed up for the defence of the socialist leader George Fernandes.

Swaraj Kaushal is now a senior advocate of Supreme Court of India and a criminal lawyer who served as Governor of Mizoram from 1990 to 1993. He was a member of parliament from 1998 to 2004.

The couple have a daughter, Bansuri, who is a graduate from Oxford University and a Barrister at Law from Inner Temple.

Sushma Swaraj's sister Vandana Sharma is an associate professor of political science in a government college for girls in Haryana.

Swaraj's brother Dr. Gulshan Sharma is an Ayurveda doctor based in Ambala.

On 10 December 2016 she underwent a kidney transplant at AIIMS, with the organ being harvested from a living unrelated donor. The surgery was successful.

Swaraj, while being the Minister of External Affairs of the NDA government, issued an NOC against a specific query raised by the UK government about the Indo-UK bilateral relationship if UK granted permission to Lalit Modi, an Indian fugitive in a cricket scandal who had been staying in Britain since 2010, to attend his wife's surgery in Portugal. She conveyed to the British High Commissioner that they should examine Modi's request as per their rules and wrote "if the British government chooses to give travel documents to Lalit Modi -– that will not spoil our bilateral relations". However, some people mentioned this incident as Swaraj helping Lalit Modi in the travel visa process.

On 12 August 2015, leader of Indian National Congress, Mallikarjun Kharge, moved an Adjournment Motion in the lower house seeking resignation of Sushma Swaraj due to her alleged conduct in this regard. Initially, the motion was rejected by the Speaker, but was accepted on Swaraj's insistence. Intervening in the motion, Swaraj clarified that Lalit Modi's right of residency was not cancelled since the Enforcement Directorate did not file an extradition request. The Adjournment Motion was subsequently rejected with voice vote. Sushma Swaraj was heavily criticised in 2014 when she urged Prime Minister Modi to declare Bhagwat Gita as the national book of India.

On 6 August 2019, Sushma Swaraj had reportedly complained of restlessness and was rushed to AIIMS Delhi as her health condition was critical. She died following a massive heart attack.

• 1977–82 Elected as Member, Haryana Legislative Assembly.
• 1977–79 Cabinet Minister, Labour and Employment, Government of Haryana.
• 1987–90 Elected as Member, Haryana Legislative Assembly.
• 1987–90 Cabinet Minister, Education, Food and Civil Supplies, Government of Haryana.
• 1990–96 Elected to Rajya Sabha (1st term)
• 1996–97 [15 May 1996 – 4 December 1997] Member, Eleventh Lok Sabha (2nd term).
• 1996 [16 May – 1 June] – Union Cabinet Minister, Information and Broadcasting.
• 1998–99 [10 March 1998 – 26 April 1999] Member, Twelfth Lok Sabha (3rd term).
• 1998 [19 March – 12 October] Union Cabinet Minister, Information and Broadcasting and Telecommunications (Additional charge).
• 1998 [13 October – 3 December] Chief Minister of Delhi.
• 1998 [November] – Elected from Hauz Khas Assembly constituency of Delhi Assembly. Resigned from Delhi Assembly and retained Lok Sabha seat.
• 2000–06 Member, Rajya Sabha (4th term).
• 2000–03 [30 September 2000 – 29 January 2003] Minister of Information and Broadcasting.
• 2003–04 [29 January 2003 – 22 May 2004] Minister of Health and Family Welfare and Minister of Parliamentary Affairs.
• 2006–09 [April 2006 -] Member, Rajya Sabha (5th term).
• 2009–14 [16 May 2009 – 18 May 2014] Member, 15th Lok Sabha (6th term).
• 2009-09 [3 June 2009 – 21 December 2009] Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
• 2009–14 [21 December 2009 – 18 May 2014] Leader of the Opposition and replaced Lal Krishna Advani.
• 2014–present [26 May 2014–] Member, 16th Lok Sabha (7th term)
• 2014–2019 [26 May 2014 – 29 May 2019] Minister of External Affairs in the Union of India