New Delhi: Senior BJP leader and former external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj died at the age of 67 in the national capital here, Tuesday night. She was admitted to All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the evening after her health condition deteriorated.
The two-time MP had been having some health-related complications over the past several months. She had also opted out of contesting Lok Sabha election 2019 and had cited health reasons for it.
According to sources, Swaraj was brought to AIIMS at 10:15pm and was straight away taken to the emergency ward. A number of senior ministers were rushing to the AIIMS.
A few hours before she died, Swaraj had put out a tweet in the evening congratulating Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Centre’s bold move to revoke special status for Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcate the border state into two Union Territories secured Parliament’s approval.
“Thank you Prime Minister. Thank you very much. I was waiting to see this day in my lifetime,” she said. Swaraj had a kidney transplant in 2016. Swaraj was the foreign minister from May 26 2014 to May 30 2019, and she was the second woman to hold the office, after Indira Gandhi. She had been elected from Vidisha constituency in Madhya Pradesh for a second term in 2014, retaining her seat by a margin of over 4, 00,000 votes.
A seven-time Member of Parliament, she also served as MLA for three terms. She also served as fifth Chief Minister of Delhi from October 13, 1998 to December 3, 1998.
Sushma was known for using her official clout to reach out and help Indians in distress across the globe. She trumped her role as India’s External Affairs Minister with her charisma and statesmanship.
She had performed her duties as the external affairs minister till the day of the counting for 2019 Lok Sabha elections as she was already scheduled to attend Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Kyrgyz capital Bishkek.
At the conference, Sushma told off Pakistan for orchestrating terror attacks in Pulwama. Even during the SCO Foreign Ministers’ conference, she said India’s wounds of the February 14 attack on CRPF convoy were “still raw” when the ghastly terror attacks happened in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. She said the attacks in Sri Lanka had made India more determined to fight the scourge firmly.
Earlier in March, Swaraj became the first female leader to be invited as “guest of honour” at the inaugural session of Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting in Abu Dhabi. Pakistan had dropped out of the OIC meet.