Sushma Swaraj

Sushma Swaraj

Sushma Swaraj was an Indian politician and a Supreme Court lawyer. She served as the Minister of External Affairs of India in the first Narendra Modi government. She was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian award posthumously in 2020. She died on 6 August 2018 after suffering a heartattack following a cardiothoracic arrest.

About Sushma Swaraj in brief

Summary Sushma SwarajSushma Swaraj was an Indian politician and a Supreme Court lawyer. She served as the Minister of External Affairs of India in the first Narendra Modi government. She was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian award posthumously in 2020 in the field of Public Affairs. She decided not to contest the 2019 Indian general election due to health reasons as she was recovering from a kidney transplant. According to the doctors at AIIMS New Delhi, she succumbed to a cardiac arrest following a heart attack on the night of 6 August 2019. Sushma was born on 14 February 1952 at Ambala Cantonment, Haryana, to Hardev Sharma and Shrimati Laxmi Devi. Her father was a prominent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh member. Her parents hailed from the Dharampura area of Lahore, Pakistan. 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 for a short duration in 1998 and became the First female Chief Minister in Delhi.

She won the Vidisha constituency in Madhya Pradesh for a second term, retaining her seat by a margin of over 400,000 votes in the 2014 Indian general elections. She died on 6 August 2018 after suffering a heartattack following a cardiothoracic arrest. She is survived by her husband, Swraj Kaushal, and their two children, Ravi and Ravi Rana. Her husband was closely associated with the socialist leader George Fernandes. She actively participated in Jayaprakash Narayan’s Total Revolution Movement. After the Emergency, she joined the Bharatiya Janata Party. She became a national leader of the BJP and later, she was elected to the 11th Lok Sabha from the South Delhi constituency in the April 1996 elections. In September 1999, Swarj was nominated by the BJP to contest against the Congress party’s national President Sonia Gandhi. She lost the election by a wide margin, but retained her seat in October 1999.