Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Indian government faced intense setbacks after female journalists were prevented from participating in Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s press conference in New Delhi reported Indian media.
Muttaqi is on a six -day visit after receiving a temporary exemption from his travel ban from the UN Security Council (UNSC) committee. It was the first such trip to India of an Afghan Taliban leader since 2021.
India, a day earlier, upgraded ties with Afghanistan’s Taliban administration, giving a boost to the diplomatically isolated group by announcing that it would open its embassy in Kabul, which was closed after the Taliban, which seized power in 2021.
During the visit, the visiting Foreign Minister held a press conference on the Afghanistan ambassaden in Delhi, where the female journalists were stopped by the security staff and Delhi police officers from attending the event despite several requests.
Opposition parties condemned the Modi administration for its silence over the exclusion of female journalists from the high profiled event and called it an “insult to any Indian woman”.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said women have the right to equal participation in each field, adding that the incident sends a message that Modi is “too weak to stand up for their rights.”
“Mr Modi, when you allow the exclusion of female journalists from a public forum, you tell any woman in India that you are too weak to stand up to them,” he wrote on X.
“In our country, women are entitled to equal participation in each room. Your silence in the light of such discrimination exposes the emptiness of your slogans on nari shakti [woman power]“He added.
Senior Congress Leader Priyanka Gandhi demanded that the Modi government clarify its attitude to the question.
“If your recognition of women’s rights is not only practical attitude from one choice to another, 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 asked.
Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram also criticized the media’s handling of the event and said that male journalists who were present on the briefing “should have gone out in protest.”
Trinamool -Congress -MP Mahua Moitra went ahead and threw the government to “shame any Indian woman” through its participation. “By allowing such discrimination on Indian soil, modi regime has surrendered the dignity of the country,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs distanced itself from the controversy and claimed it had no “role” in the events of the event.
According to the ministry, the invitations to the press conference to elect journalists from Afghanistan’s Consul General in Mumbai, stationed in Delhi for the Afghan ministerial visit. The Afghan embassy area does not come under the jurisdiction of the Indian government, it pointed out.
