Opposition criticises PM Modi over exclusion of ladies journalists from Afghan Foreign Ministers press meet

Opposition events on Saturday (October 11, 2025) criticised the Narendra Modi authorities over the absence of ladies journalists from a press convention addressed by visiting Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, with Congress common secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra asking the Prime Minister to make clear his place on the matter.

“Mr. Modi, if you enable the exclusion of ladies journalists from a public discussion board, you might be telling each lady in India that you’re too weak to face up for them. In our nation, ladies have the suitable to equal participation in each area. Your silence within the face of such discrimination exposes the vacancy of your slogans on Nari Shakti,” Leader of the Opposition within the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi mentioned in a put up on social media platform X.

Mr. Gandhi’s put up was in response to Ms. Vadra’s earlier message, during which she requested whether or not the Prime Minister’s recognition of ladies’s rights was “simply handy posturing from one election to a different,” and questioned how such an “insult to a few of India’s most competent ladies” may have been permitted.

“Prime Minister @narendramodi ji, please make clear your place on the removing of feminine journalists from the press convention of the consultant of the Taliban on his go to to India,” she mentioned on X.

The press convention, addressed by the Afghanistan Foreign Minister on Friday (October 10, 2025), was restricted to a restricted group of male journalists, with ladies reporters conspicuously absent.

Mr. Muttaqi held the interplay on the Afghan Embassy in New Delhi, hours after holding wide-ranging talks with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.

While there was no official remark from the Government of India, it’s learnt that the choice on media invites was taken by Taliban officers accompanying the visiting minister. Sources mentioned the Indian facet had instructed to the Afghan delegation that ladies journalists be included among the many invitees.

“(Tali)ban on feminine journalists in India. Shocking and unacceptable that the Govt of India agreed to it – and that too in New Delhi on the eve of the International Day of the Girl Child,” Congress communication chief Jairam Ramesh mentioned in a put up on X.

Former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, expressing his private view, mentioned, “The males journalists ought to have walked out after they discovered that their ladies colleagues had been excluded (or not invited).”

Communist Party of India common secretary D. Raja, tagging External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in his X put up, requested, “Was it simply Taliban misogyny or a tacit endorsement of it on Indian soil? The Republic of India is constructed on equality. We are the nation which gave ladies voting rights from day one, when many Western international locations lagged behind. To enable such exclusion right here is blasphemy to our constitutional spirit.”

Mr. Raja urged the Ministry of External Affairs to clarify the way it agreed to “allow this discriminatory spectacle”. “This just isn’t diplomatic nuance. This is nourishment to patriarchal ideology that wishes to erase half the world from public life. We should name it out, with out hesitation,” he added.