‘No role in Afghan FM’s press meet’: MEA clarifies after backlash over women journalists’ exclusion

After the incident triggered a huge uproar on social media over the discriminatory behaviour, several Opposition leaders questioned the Centre over the alleged “ban” on women at the event.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying, “When you allow the exclusion of women journalists from a public forum, you are telling every woman in India that you are too weak to stand up for them.”

“In our country, women have the right to equal participation in every space. Your silence in the face of such discrimination exposes the emptiness of your slogans on Nari Shakti,” he added.

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra asked PM Modi to “clarify” his position on the incident. She asked how the “insult to some of India’s most competent women was allowed in our country, a country whose women are its backbone and its pride.”

Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra said: “Govt has dishonoured every single Indian woman by allowing the Taliban minister to exclude women journalists from presser. Shameful bunch of spineless hypocrites.”

Former Union minister P Chidambaram said male journalists should have acted when they found out that women were not allowed at the event. “I am shocked that women journalists were excluded from the press conference addressed by 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),” he said.

The visit by Muttaqi, who arrived in Delhi on Thursday, is the first by a Taliban foreign minister. As the first step towards normalising diplomatic ties with the Taliban since the group seized power in Afghanistan in 2021, India on Friday said it would upgrade its “technical mission” in Kabul to the status of an embassy. Muttaqi, on his part, said Kabul would send diplomats to India as part of step-by-step efforts to improve bilateral relations.

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