Sushma Swaraj

Sushma Swaraj (née Sharma; 14 February 1952 – 6 August 2019) was an Indian lawyer and politician, who served as the Minister of External Affairs of India in the first Narendra Modi government from 2014 to 2019. She was the second person to complete a 5-year term as the Minister of External Affairs, after Jawaharlal Nehru. A senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Swaraj was the second woman to hold the office of Minister of External Affairs, after Indira Gandhi. She was elected seven times as a Member of Parliament and three times as a Member of the Legislative Assembly. At the age of 25 in 1977, she became the youngest cabinet minister of the Indian state of Haryana. She also served as 5th Chief Minister of Delhi for a short duration in 1998 and became the first female Chief Minister of Delhi.

Sushma Swaraj
Swaraj in 2017
29th Minister of External Affairs
In office
26 May 2014  30 May 2019
Prime MinisterNarendra Modi
Preceded bySalman Khurshid
Succeeded byS. Jaishankar
Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs
In office
26 May 2014  7 January 2016
Prime MinisterNarendra Modi
Preceded byVayalar Ravi
Succeeded byOffice abolished
Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha
In office
21 December 2009  26 May 2014
Prime MinisterManmohan Singh
DeputyGopinath Munde
Preceded byL. K. Advani
Succeeded byVacant
Minister of Parliamentary Affairs
In office
29 January 2003  22 May 2004
Prime MinisterAtal Bihari Vajpayee
Preceded byPramod Mahajan
Succeeded byGhulam Nabi Azad
Minister of Health and Family Welfare
In office
29 January 2003  22 May 2004
Prime MinisterAtal Bihari Vajpayee
Preceded byC. P. Thakur
Succeeded byAnbumani Ramadoss
Minister of Information and Broadcasting
In office
30 September 2000  29 January 2003
Prime MinisterAtal Bihari Vajpayee
Preceded byArun Jaitley
Succeeded byRavi Shankar Prasad
In office
19 March 1998  11 October 1998
Prime MinisterAtal Bihari Vajpayee
Preceded byS. Jaipal Reddy
Succeeded byPramod Mahajan
In office
16 May 1996  01 June 1996
Prime MinisterAtal Bihari Vajpayee
Preceded byP.A.Sangma
Succeeded byC. M. Ibrahim
Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha
In office
10 April 1990  09 April 1996
ConstituencyHaryana
In office
03 April 2000  08 November 2000
ConstituencyUttar Pradesh
In office
09 November 2000  02 April 2006
Lieutenant GovernorVijai Kapoor
ConstituencyUttarakhand
In office
03 April 2006  30 May 2009
ConstituencyMadhya Pradesh
5th Chief Minister of Delhi
In office
13 October 1998  3 December 1998
Preceded bySahib Singh Verma
Succeeded bySheila Dikshit
Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha
In office
31 May 2009  24 May 2019
Preceded byRampal Singh
Succeeded byRamakant Bhargava
ConstituencyVidisha
In office
7 May 1996  3 October 1999
Preceded byMadan Lal Khurana
Succeeded byVijay Kumar Malhotra
ConstituencySouth Delhi
Minister of Labour and Employment Government of Haryana
In office
June 1977  June 1979
Minister of

Education

Government of Haryana
In office
July 1987  December 1989
Personal details
Born
Sushma Sharma

(1952-02-14)14 February 1952
Ambala Cantonment, Punjab, India
(present-day Haryana)
Died6 August 2019(2019-08-06) (aged 67)
New Delhi, India
Cause of deathCardiac arrest
Political partyBharatiya Janata Party
Spouse
(m. 1975)
ChildrenBansuri Swaraj
Alma materSanatan Dharma College (BA)
Panjab University (LLB)
ProfessionSenior advocate
AwardsPadma Vibhushan (2020; posthumously)
Source:

In the 2014 Indian general election, Swaraj won the Vidisha constituency in Madhya Pradesh for a second term, retaining her seat by a margin of over 400,000 votes. She became the Minister of External Affairs in the union cabinet on 26 May 2014. Swaraj was called India's "best-loved politician" by the US daily Wall Street Journal. She decided not to contest the 2019 Indian general election due to health reasons as she was recovering from a kidney transplant and needed to "save herself from dust and stay safe from infection" and hence did not join the second Modi Ministry in 2019.

According to the doctors at AIIMS New Delhi, Swaraj succumbed to a cardiac arrest following a heart attack on the night of 6 August 2019. She was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, posthumously in 2020 in the field of Public Affairs.

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