By IANS
New Delhi : Najma Heptullah, one of India's most experienced women parliamentarians, is one of only two women who have been nominated to the Rajya Sabha five times.
A relative of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, her entire political history was in association with the Congress. But in a dramatic switch in 2004, she sailed over to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after blasting Congress president Sonia Gandhi over her foreign origin.
Few people have been able to explain that somersault.
Heptullah first entered the Rajya Sabha July 5, 1980. In January of that year Indira Gandhi stormed back to power after trouncing a badly divided Janata Party.
In 1977, when the Janata Party routed the Congress after over two years of Emergency rule, Muslims, particularly in northern India, played a key role in the defeat.
So Indira Gandhi deployed prominent Muslim faces to reinforce her secular credentials. Heptullah was the beneficiary of Indira Gandhi's thinking.
Heptullah belonged originally to Bhopal, where she was born and brought up. After marriage she settled down in Mumbai.
Besides being educationally qualified — a M.Sc in zoology and later a Ph.D in cardiac anatomy – Heptullah has been singularly lucky.
Only nine people have served five terms in the Rajya Sabha. The others include veteran communist Bhupesh Gupta, veteran Akali politician Gurcharan Singh Tohra, former Congress president Sitaram Kesri, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj and Saroj Khaparde, another woman politician from Maharashtra.
But Heptullah is the only one nominated by two parties – the first four times by the Congress and later by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In January 1986, even before her second term in the Rajya Sabha commenced, she was elevated to the position of deputy chairperson of the house by then Congress president Rajiv Gandhi.
She held the post until she fell out with Sonia Gandhi and joined the BJP.
She has also chaired the International Parliamentary Union (IPU). Apart from this, she has occasionally served as India's special envoy to countries in the Middle East.