Mumbai
\nAmid sexual harassment allegations against her ministerial colleague MJ Akbar, Union Minister Smriti Irani Thursday said it was for him to respond to the charges even as she favoured justice for the \u201cladies who are speaking out\u201d.<\/p>\n
As the #MeToo campaign gathered momentum, some women journalists have come out and accused Akbar, Minister of State for External Affairs, of sexually harassing them during his stint as editor in two newspapers.
\n\u201cThe gentleman concerned would be better positioned to speak on this issue,\u201d Irani, the Union Textiles Minister, told reporters here while responding to questions over allegations against Akbar.<\/p>\n
Akbar, whose resignation from the government is being demanded by opposition political parties and various others, has not reacted to the allegations so far.
\n\u201cI appreciate that the media is accosting his female colleagues but I think it is for the gentleman concerned to issue a statement not for me because I was personally not present there,\u201d Irani said.<\/p>\n
I have said again and again on this particular issue, especially about women speaking out that anybody speaking out that in no way should be shamed, victimised or mocked. That is my only appeal to everybody who is witnessing this surge of outpouring of emotion, of anger on the internet and offline also, she said on the sidelines of an event here.<\/p>\n
So, I will say here today it must be very difficult for women to come out and talk about whatever happened in their professional lives. It is extremely an important part in time in our society where more and more women are getting the support, so they can speak out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mumbai Amid sexual harassment allegations against her ministerial colleague MJ Akbar, Union Minister Smriti Irani Thursday said it was for him to respond to the charges even as she favoured justice for the \u201cladies who are speaking out\u201d. As the #MeToo campaign gathered momentum, some women journalists have come out and accused Akbar, Minister of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312,315],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44319,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44317\/revisions\/44319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}