‘Clarify Your Position’: Priyanka Slams PM After Women Journalists Barred From Taliban Minister’s Presser
A major political controversy erupted in New Delhi on Saturday after Indian women journalists were allegedly barred from attending a press conference held by the Taliban’s visiting Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi. The incident prompted a sharp backlash from the Congress party, with MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra directly questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stance on women’s rights and asking him to “clarify his position.
“In a strongly-worded post on X, Priyanka Gandhi criticized the government for allowing the “insult” of women journalists to happen on Indian soil. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji… If your recognition of women’s rights isn’t just convenient posturing from one election to the other, then how has this insult to some of India’s most competent women been allowed in our country, a country whose women are its backbone and its pride,” she wrote.
The controversy surrounds a press conference organized at the Afghanistan Embassy during Muttaqi’s visit, which is the first high-level delegation from Kabul to India since the Taliban seized power in August 2021. The alleged exclusion of female journalists has sparked outrage and accusations that the Indian government is acceding to the Taliban’s regressive and discriminatory policies.Senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram expressed his shock over the incident and suggested that male journalists should have boycotted the event in solidarity. “I am shocked that women journalists were excluded… In my personal view, the men journalists should have walked out when they found that their women colleagues were excluded,” he posted on X.
His son, Congress MP Karti Chidambaram, also criticized the government, expressing disappointment with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. “I understand the geopolitical compulsions that force us to engage with the Taliban, but to acede to their discriminatory & plain primitive mores is outright ridiculous,” he said.
