Opposition parties on Saturday (October 11, 2025) criticised the Narendra Modi government over the absence of women journalists from a press conference addressed by visiting Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, with Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra asking the Prime Minister to clarify his position on the matter.
MEA denies involvement in Afghan FM Muttaqi’s presser that excluded women journalists
“Mr. Modi, when you allow the exclusion of women journalists from a public forum, you are telling every woman in India that you are too weak to stand up for them. In our country, women have the right to equal participation in every space. Your silence in the face of such discrimination exposes the emptiness of your slogans on Nari Shakti,” Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said in a post on social media platform X.
Mr. Gandhi’s post was in response to Ms. Vadra’s earlier message, in which she asked whether the Prime Minister’s recognition of women’s rights was “just convenient posturing from one election to another,” and questioned how such an “insult to some of India’s most competent women” could have been permitted.
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