Union External Affairs Minister and Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj will not contest the 2019 general elections due to health reasons. She underwent kidney transplantation in 2016.
She announced her decision at a press conference on Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Right now she is campaigning for the party in the upcoming assembly elections. She says she’s made up her mind, but also that her party, the BJP, will take a call.
Swaraj, 66, is the Lok Sabha MP from Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh. In 2014, she won the election in her constituency by a whopping margin of more than 4 lakh votes.
Her political career spans several decades; she was only 25 when she became a Haryana state minister in 1977. She won the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award in 2004 and served as the leader of the Opposition during UPA-II.
Foreign Policy magazine named her as one of its “global thinkers” in 2016, in a list that included Angela Merkel, Melinda Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. The journal cited her “novel brand of Twitter diplomacy.” The Washington Post took note of her use of social media, too. It called her India’s “crusading Supermom of State”.
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