NEW DELHI: Congress leader and former Union minister Mohsina Kidwai, 94, passed away on Wednesday in a Noida hospital after battling age-related ailments, her family said. A trailblazer in Indian politics, she served under Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, holding key portfolios. Over her distinguished career, she served in all four legislative bodies—as an MLC, MLA, and MP in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
She was a rare politician, known for her calm, an attribute exemplified in countless moments, this being one of the most striking. On a heavy May afternoon in 2014, when the Indian National Congress had sunk to one of its lowest ebbs, the lawns of 24, Akbar Road felt subdued. TV crews hovered, reporters spoke in low voices, and some were already drafting obituaries for the party. Into that moment stepped Mohsina Kidwai—calm, unhurried, and certain of what she wanted to say.
She didn’t argue with the mood; instead, she leaned on memory. In a quiet way, Kidwai reminded a small group of journalists how the Congress had been written off before — after the Emergency, after the defeats that followed, after being wiped out in Uttar Pradesh in the Mandal-Mandir churn. The recovery, she said, hadn’t come from big speeches or quick fixes. Leaders had gone door to door—to homes, mohallas, villages—to apologise, to listen, to ask for another chance. It was slow, sometimes humbling work. “We have to begin again,” she said.
That sense of politics as patient, ground-level work ran through her career. Born in 1932 in Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, Kidwai entered public life early and stayed the course for decades. She served multiple terms in both Houses of Parliament and was part of Union governments led by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
Her ministerial stints—in health and family welfare, urban development and tourism—were not headline-grabbing, but colleagues recall her as steady and accessible, someone who worked both files and people with care.
She was not a mass leader in the conventional sense, nor did she cultivate a larger-than-life persona. Her strength lay in the organisation — in keeping lines open, in managing the everyday demands of a party that often swung between dominance and drift. She could be firm but rarely sharp-edged, persuasive, not confrontational.
Her last visible political intervention carried a hint of that independence. In the 2022 Congress presidential election, she proposed and seconded Shashi Tharoor against the establishment-backed Mallikarjun Kharge. It was not dramatic, but it was noticed within the party — a quiet signal that she was not entirely bound by the prevailing line.
Kidwai is survived by her children and extended family, who largely stayed out of the public eye. Personal losses over the years were handled much the same way she conducted politics — without display.
She belonged to a generation that had seen the Congress at its peak and in retreat, and did not treat defeat as exceptional. In later years, as the party struggled again, her view did not change much: rebuild slowly, reconnect, do the hard work. Whether that approach still holds, or is even possible in the current climate, is an open question. With her passing, Congress loses a certain kind of internal anchor — not showy, but present when it mattered.