Nirendra Dev
Sushma Swaraj was a splendid orator and a former I&B and Health Minister under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and an External Affairs Minister between 2014 and May 2019 under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar, on Friday, August 6, recalled his illustrious predecessor and a former boss, Late Sushma Swaraj.
"Remembering Sushma Swarajji today. Her warm and inspiring presence missed so much," tweeted Dr Jaishankar with a photograph of him with the deceased leader.
Born on February 14, 1952, Sushma Swaraj breathed her last on August 6, 2019.
She had health problems for quite some time and stayed away from the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
A splendid orator and a former I&B and Health Minister under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, she was also an External Affairs Minister between 2014 and May 2019 under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Defence Minister and former BJP chief Rajnath Singh also tweeted, paying homage to the former colleague of many years.
"… Specially her performance as foreign minister of India will be remembered for a long time," Rajnath Singh tweeted in Hindi.
A major highlight of her stint as a foreign minister was visiting Pakistan and touching Nawaz Sharif's mother's feet, seeking blessings for India-Pakistan peace and brotherhood.
She was rightly called the 'mother' of Twitter diplomacy for using social media to benefit hundreds of Indians overseas and connect to Indian officials on various diplomatic missions.
Late Swaraj also holds the record of being the only Indian External Affairs Minister to address the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) at Abu Dhabi as a special guest in Abu Dhabi on March 1, 2019.
She spoke candidly, quoting Swami Vivekananda and Holy Quran. She had said: "If we want to save the humanity then we must tell the states (a veiled reference to Pakistan) who provide shelter and funding to the terrorists to dismantle the infrastructure of the terrorist camps and stop providing funding and shelter to the terror organisations."
A BJP spokesperson for a long time, Sushma Swaraj–would go down the memory lane for journalists–as a pleasant demeanour. A leader who would be frank and knew media persons too well to even ask,–“Why you left that organisation, was it money or atmosphere?”
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