"Clarify your position": Priyanka Gandhi questions PM Modi over exclusion of women journalists from Afghan FM Muttaqi's press conference

New Delhi [India], October 11 (ANI): Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Saturday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to "clarify his position" on the exclusion of women journalists from Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi's press conference in New Delhi.
Priyanka Gandhi criticised the government for "allowing insult" of women journalists and questioned PM Modi whether his recognition of women's rights is "convenient posturing" from one election to another.
In a post on X, Wayanad MP said, "Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji, please clarify your position on the removal of female journalists from the press conference of the representative of the Taliban on his visit to India. If your recognition of women's rights isn't just convenient posturing from one election to the other, then how has this insult to some of India's most competent women been allowed in our country, a country whose women are its backbone and its pride."

Prime Minister @narendramodi ji, please clarify your position on the removal of female journalists from the press conference of the representative of the Taliban on his visit to India.

If your recognition of women’s rights isn’t just convenient posturing from one election to…

— Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (@priyankagandhi) October 11, 2025

A controversy erupted in New Delhi over a press conference by the Taliban's acting Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, where Indian women journalists were allegedly barred from attending at the Afghanistan Embassy.
Former Union Home Minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram expressed shock and disappointment over the incident and felt that male journalists should have boycotted the event in solidarity with their female colleagues.
"I am shocked that women journalists were excluded from the press conference addressed by Mr 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 in a post on X.
Congress MP Karti P Chidambaram also criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government over the issue and expressed his disappointment with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.
"I understand the geopolitical compulsions that force us to engage with the Taliban, but to acede to their discriminatory & plain primitive mores is outright ridiculous, it's very disappointing to note the conduct of the Ministry of External Affairs and S Jaishankar in excluding women journalists from the press briefing of the Taliban Minister," he said.
The Taliban minister is on a week-long visit to India, beginning from October 9 till October 16. This is the first high-level delegation from Kabul to India since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021. (ANI)