NEW DELHI: After no women journalists were allowed to attend the press conference conducted by Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in New Delhi on Friday at the Afghan embassy, several opposition leaders have expressed anger over the action.
Senior Congress leader and former Home Minister P Chidambaram condemned the incident and urged that male journalists should have walked out when they found out that their women colleagues were excluded.
Taking to X, he said, “I am shocked that women journalists were excluded from the press conference addressed by Mr Amir Khan Muttaqi of Afghanistan In my personal view, the men journalists should have walked out when they found that their women colleagues were excluded (or not invited).”
Meanwhile, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the action and asked him to clarify his position on the removal of female journalists from the press conference of the representative of the Taliban on his visit to India.
In a post on X, she said, ” Prime Minister ji, please clarify your position on the removal of female journalists from the press conference of the representative of the Taliban on his visit to India. If your recognition of women’s rights isn’t just convenient posturing from one election to the other, then 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.”
Agencies