Sushma Swaraj death news | In a political career spanning over 40 years, Sushma Swaraj had many firsts in her stint with the BJP. She was the youngest Cabinet minister of Haryana at just 25 years of age. She then was elected to the assembly in 1987 when Devi Lal ousted the Congress from power that triggered an electoral cascade which eventually saw the Congress lose power at the Centre in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections.
Express Archives | Rare pictures of Sushma Swaraj
She came into national limelight because of her ideologically fierce oratory in Lok Sabha, especially during the 1996 trust vote. Her political articulation, drawn from India’s mythological traditions, endeared her to the common man who could grasp her arguments.
Her political career was a trail blazer for many a woman politician — she graduated from student politics to state politics to national politics and became an icon. Her rise within the BJP, considered a party of conservatives, was testimony to her political acumen, courage and mass appeal. She was also part of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 13-day government in 1996.
‘Irreparable loss’: LK Advani condoles Sushma Swaraj’s death
As Leader of Opposition, she was widely considered the natural claimant for the party’s leadership in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections given her long stint in national politics. But it was the BJP Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, who upstaged all internal calculations to become the prime ministerial candidate of the party.
Swaraj, who had a kidney transplant in 2016, had opted out of fighting the Lok Sabha elections this year due to health reasons and was left out of the new Cabinet.
