Former External Affairs Minister and BJP stalwart Sushma Swaraj passed away in Delhi following a cardiac arrest .She was 67. She was admitted to AIIMS at 10:15 PM on Tuesday night and was straight away taken to the emergency ward.
She had a kidney transplant in 2016 and had opted out of contesting Lok Sabha polls earlier this year for health reasons.She had served her fourth term in Lok Sabha and had long been her party’s most prominent woman face. She was the youngest cabinet minister at 25 when she joined the Haryana government in 1977 and the first woman chief minister of Delhi. She was also the first woman external affairs minister of India.
In a tweet, Swaraj had thanked Prime Minister for everything and also expressed her gladness in seeing the passage of the bill to reorganise Jammu and Kashmir. “Thank you Prime Minister. Thank you very much. I was waiting to see this day in my lifetime,” she said.
PM Narendra Modi also took to twitter to condole her death. He tweeted, “Sushma Ji’s demise is a personal loss. She will be remembered fondly for everything that she’s done for India. My thoughts are with her family, supporters and admirers in this very unfortunate hour. Om Shanti.”
“A glorious chapter in Indian politics comes to an end. India grieves the demise of a remarkable leader who devoted her life to public service and bettering lives of the poor. Sushma Swaraj ji was one of her kind, who was a source of inspiration for crores of people,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a series of tweets. Union ministers Harsh Vardhan, Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani Prakash Javadekar, reached AIIMS after she was admitted to the hospital.
