Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi provided a clarification on Sunday after furore over the absence of women journalists from a press conference he addressed in New Delhi on Friday.

The criticism had notably come from India’s opposition Congress party, which rebuked the Narendra Modi government. There were calls for the Indian government to clarify its position on the matter and questioned its silence on the “discrimination”.

Subsequently, Indian news agency ANI posted a video of Muttaqi on X today, in which he was seen clarifying the matter in Pashto.

The Afghan foreign minister said, “Our teams had contacted a limited number of journalists for the press conference, and only those journalists were invited … It later emerged that some journalists were not on the list. It was nothing more than that.

“Our colleagues thought that those who had been on the list should be invited. So, the participants were limited. It was just this decision and no other.”

While there has been no official comment from the government of India, Dawn earlier reported that the decision on media invitations was taken by Taliban officials accompanying Muttaqi on his India visit. It quoted sources as saying that the Indian side had suggested to the Afghan delegation that women journalists be included among the invitees.

Criticism

The criticism over the absence of women journalists notably came from opposition leader in India Rahul Gandhi, who posted on X: “Mr Modi, when you allow the exclusion of women journalists from a public forum, you are telling every woman in India that you are too weak to stand up for them. In our country, women have the right to equal participation in every space.

“Your silence in the face of such discrimination exposes the emptiness of your slogans on Nari Shakti (woman power).“

His post followed Congress General Secretary Priyanka Vadra’s message, in which she asked whether the prime minister’s recognition of women’s rights was “just convenient posturing from one election to another”, and questioned how such an “insult to some of India’s most competent women” could have been permitted.

“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,” she said on X.

Con­g­ress communications chief Jai­ram Ramesh posted on X: (Tali)ban on female journalists in India. Shocking and unacceptable that the govt of India agreed to it — and that too in New Delhi on the eve of the Inter­na­ti­onal Day of the Girl Child.“

Similarly, former finance minister P. Chidambaram said: “The men journalists should have walked out when they found that their women colleagues were excluded (or not invited).”

Communist Party of India general secretary D. Raja, tagging the Indian foreign minister in his X post, asked: “Was it just Taliban misogyny or a tacit endorsement of it on Indian soil? The Republic of India is built on equality. We are the nation which gave women voting rights from day one, when many Western countries lagged behind.

“To allow such exclusion here is blasphemy to our constitutional spirit.”

Raja urged the ministry of external affairs to explain how it agreed to “permit this discriminatory spectacle”.

“This is not a diplomatic nuance. This is nourishment to patriarchal ideology that wants to erase half the world from public life. We must call it out, without hesitation,” he added.

The Afghan Taliban, who promised a softer rule after retaking power in Kabul in August 2021, have imposed sweeping restrictions on women, banning them from universities, public parks, gyms and beauty salons — measures the UN has labelled “gender apartheid”.