Do we like Smriti Irani?
Our score: 5 out of 10. A self-made woman with real grit, set against remarks on periods, Sabarimala and gay men that drew fair criticism and one claim rated false.
Smriti Irani was born Smriti Malhotra in Delhi in 1976, into a middle-class family. By 17 she was selling cosmetics on Janpath for ₹200 a day. After the Miss India finals brought no job offers, she took a job at India's first McDonald's, sweeping floors and washing dishes for ₹1,800 a month.
In 2000 she was cast as Tulsi Virani in Ekta Kapoor's soap Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, a role she played for over eight years. She joined the BJP in 2003, lost Chandni Chowk in 2004, then lost narrowly to Rahul Gandhi in Amethi in 2014. She beat him there in 2019 and held ministries including Human Resource Development, Textiles, and Women and Child Development. In June 2024 she lost Amethi to Congress's Kishori Lal Sharma by 167,196 votes.
The Sabarimala stoush of 2018 is the one that stuck. Speaking at a conference, she said “I have a right to pray. I do not have the right to desecrate.” She also asked whether you would take a sanitary napkin steeped in blood to a friend's home. Alt News reported that the rumour behind this seemed to have started with a pro-BJP Kerala outlet, and that Kerala police said no woman had carried a pad into the temple. She called the criticism fake news.
In February 2016, as HRD minister, she told Parliament that Rohith Vemula's body had been used as a political tool. She also said no doctor was allowed near him. Opposition leaders such as Mayawati and Sitaram Yechury pressed the government on the case. A University of Hyderabad medical officer later disputed her account, and the family rejected it, per later coverage.
On the harm check, there is no campaign against trans or gay people on the record I could find, and nothing on vaccines or climate either. But in December 2023 she opposed mandatory paid period leave, saying menstruation is “not a handicap”. She later said she feared more harassment of women at work. In a separate ANI interview she asked which gay men without a uterus have a menstrual cycle, and Priyanka Chaturvedi and Supriya Shrinate called it insensitive. In 2019 Alt News rated her Parliament claim about a Rahul Gandhi remark as false.
Nothing big has landed lately. In April 2026 she attacked Priyanka Gandhi Vadra over the defeat of a bill for 33 per cent reservation for women, and Gandhi called the defeat a victory for democracy. Where you land depends on whether you read that as a fair jab at the opposition or as politics over the bill's merits. In 2025 she returned to Kyunki and said it doesn't mean leaving politics.