Veteran Congress leader Girija Vyas passes away

Congress leader Girija Vyas. File
| Photo Credit: PTI

Veteran Congress leader and former Union Minister Girija Vyas, who had sustained burn injuries during a Gangaur puja ritual at her residence in Udaipur, died at a hospital in Ahmedabad on Thursday. She was 79.

Ms. Vyas — a three-time former MP and two-time former MLA from Udaipur — sustained 90% burn injuries after her ‘dupatta’ (long scarf) caught fire during the puja ceremony on March 31. She was rushed to a private hospital in the city, from where she was later referred to Ahmedabad.

The Congress leader succumbed to burn injuries during the treatment at Zydus Multispeciality Hospital in Ahmedabad on Thursday evening. The family sources said her body was being brought to Udaipur, where the funeral would be conducted on Friday.

Ms. Vyas served as a Minister in both the State and Union governments and was also the president of the Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee. She also served as the chairperson of the National Commission for Women. She contested her last election from the Udaipur City Assembly constituency in 2018, when she lost to Bharatiya Janata Party’s Gulab Chand Kataria.

Ms. Vyas began her political career as Udaipur District Congress chief in 1977. She was a Minister in Rajasthan from 1985 to 1990 and was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1991. She was the Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting in the P.V. Narasimha Rao government and later served as the Union Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation in the Manmohan Singh government from 2013 to 2014.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, AICC general secretaries Jairam Ramesh and K.C. Venugopal, and former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot have condoled the death of Ms. Vyas.

Mr. Kharge said in a post on X that Ms. Vyas had dedicated four decades to the Congress and public service in various constitutional and organisational roles. Mr. Gandhi said Ms. Vyas’s contribution in the fields of education, social justice and especially women’s empowerment had been extremely significant. “Her departure is an irreparable loss for all of us,” he said.