Najma - Rajya Sabha member to VP nominee

New Delhi, July 22: A member of the Rajya Sabha for almost three decades and Deputy Chairperson of the house for most of that period, Najma Heptullah finally got a chance to fight the Vice Presidential election, but from her new political party.

A long-time member of the Congress, Dr Heptullah,67, had earnestly sought the party's nomination for the post in 2002.

However, her claim was turned down and instead, veteran Maratha politician Sushilkumar Shinde was fielded to take on the NDA's Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.

The party's disinclination to consider her candidature stemmed from the perception that her links with the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, which had nominated her to head the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) and sent her as leader of Indian delegations on various foreign trips, were too close.

Reportedly, she also did not get along well with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the final straw leading to her exit from the party was the denial of her renomination to the Rajya Sabha when her term ended in 2004, despite her being the Deputy Chairperson.

She left the Congress just after the 2004 general elections and joined the BJP, which nominated her to the Upper House from Rajasthan in July that year.

Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha from January 1985 to January 1986, Dr Heptullah again held the post from 1988 to 2004, succeeding Mrs Pratibha Patil, who held the post from mid-1986 to 1988.

Born in Bhopal, on April 13, 1940, Dr Heptullah, a grand-niece of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, joined the Congress party after completing her education, getting a MSc in Zoology and a PhD in Cardiac Anatomy at the age of 22. She steadily climbed up in the party, heading several divisions of the party's grassroots organisations, beginning with the posts of General Secretary and Vice-President of the Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee.

She was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1980 and has been a member of the house since then. She served as AICC General Secretary in 1986-87 and party spokesperson in 1986-87 and 1998.

She has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union since 1995 and Vice-President of the body since 1999, as well as the acting President of the IPU Council from July to October 1999 when she was elected as President of the IPU Council, holding the pos till September 2002.

Within the IPU, Dr Heptulla chaired the Meeting of Women Parliamentarians in 1993 and has been a member of the Co-ordinating Committee since then. She was further Vice-President of the Specialised IPU Conference on ''Towards Partnership between Men and Women in Politics'', held in New Delhi in 1997.

She is a member of the Union's Gender Partnership Group, set up in 1997.

An active participant in the work of the United Nations, she was Founder President of the Parliamentarians' Forum for Human Development, established in 1993 and sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Dr Heptulla presided over the Conference of Women Parliamentarians of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in New Delhi in 1992. In 1987, she became the first woman elected Vice-President of the Executive Committee of that body.

Always interested in women's issues, she headed the Indian delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 1997 and played an active part in the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995). She was a special invitee at the World Women's Forum (Harvard, 1997).

UNI