Khushbu, 2 others nominated as National Commission for Women members

Well-known actor-politician Khushbu Sundar from Tamil Nadu, who is currently a member of the BJP National Executive committee, has been nominated as a member of the National Commission for Women. She has been nominated to the NCW, along with two other candidates, for a period of three years.

This was notified in an order issued by the Union ministry of women and child development on February 24. The other two women nominated along with her are Mamta Kulkarni of Jharkhand and Delina Khongdup of Meghalaya.

BJP’s Tamil Nadu president K Annamalai congratulated Sundar on behalf of his party and further said it was “a recognition of her relentless pursuit and fight for women’s rights”. While Khushbu tweeted thanking PM Modi and the government for “such a huge responsibility”, she added that she shall strive hard to “protect, preserve & nourish Nari Shakthi which is growing leaps & bounds under your leadership”.

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Khushbu Sundar, who is also a film producer and television presenter, had started her political career in the DMK in 2010. She joined the Congress in 2014, a few months after she quit the DMK over differences with M K Stalin. Khushbu had enjoyed a lot of clout in the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC), when E V K S Elangovan was its president.

‘Untiring figher’

According to one senior Congress leader she was an untiring fighter for Congress in social media, almost every minute and hour, and a star campaigner, a real crowd puller and powerful orator during polls in public rallies. After being an ardent critic of the BJP on social media for many years, she eventually shifted to the saffron party in 2020 and contested as the party’s candidate in Thousand Lights Assembly constituency in 2021 and lost to DMK’s N Ezhilan.

In October 2022, she was in the centre of a controversy when DMK leader Sadiq made sexist comments about actresses in BJP calling them items. Khushbu said, “When men abuse women, it just shows what kind of upbringing they have had & the toxic environment they were brought up in. These men insult the womb of a woman. Such men call themselves followers of #Kalaignar Is this new Dravidian model under H’ble CM @mkstalin rule?”

Controversial comments

Khushbu most famously made national headlines when her comments on pre-marital sex in an interview to a Tamil magazine back in 2005 led to court cases filed against her. She went through a lot of harassment and was heckled in public but finally the Supreme Court came to her aid and dismissed the 22 cases filed against her. At that time, she told the media “I knew what I had spoken…it’s not an easy task for a woman to stand alone and say ‘I believe in what I have spoken’.”