Veteran Indian politician Sushma Swaraj, 67, passed away in New Delhi late Tuesday after suffering cardiac arrest, according to a hospital statement.
A senior leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Swaraj was the country’s foreign minister from 2014 to 2019, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first term in office.
She was the second woman to hold the office in India’s history.
Ms Swaraj was admitted to All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) following a deterioration in her health.
According to sources at AIIMS, the 67-year-old was feeling restless at 9 pm and reached the hospital at around 9:30 pm in an ambulance. A team of doctors tried to revive her for 70 to 80 minutes but failed in their attempt.
In a series of tweets, Modi said that Swaraj’s death was a “personal loss” and that she had worked tirelessly at India’s external affairs ministry.
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.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) 6 August 2019
Swaraj’s last tweets thanked Modi for bringing a measure to Parliament to revoke constitutional protections for the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir. The bill lawmakers passed earlier Tuesday strips Jammu and Kashmir – India’s only Muslim-majority state – of its statehood. The law also does away with the region’s right to its own constitution and to Kashmiris’ hereditary rights to land, jobs and scholarships.
Swaraj called it a “bold and historic decision.”
“Thank you Prime Minister. Thank you very much. I was waiting to see this day in my lifetime,” she wrote.
Swaraj is survived by her husband, Swaraj Kaushal, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India and a former governor of Mizoram state, and a daughter, Bansuri, also an advocate.
J.P. Nadda, working president of the BJP, said Swaraj’s body will be kept at the party office on Wednesday for people to pay homage and cremated later in the day.