At a recent meeting of a Group of Ministers (GoM), Union Minister for Women & Child Development Renuka Choudhury accused her male colleagues of being “chauvinists” for objecting to certain amendments in the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act.

According to reports, some ministers at the GoM meeting last week expressed reservations about a proposed clause that prescribed that anybody found in a brothel with a minor would be charged with rape or attempt to rape, and the responsibility to prove his innocence would lie with the accused.

The ministers questioned the legal tenability of the clause. “If an electrician goes to a brothel in connection with his job and is arrested there, should he be charged with rape? It will not stand legal scrutiny,” one of the ministers is learnt to have said at the meeting.

This enraged Chowdhury, who reportedly snapped: “A man visiting a brothel will not go there to listen to Satyanarayan Katha. One can, of course, find out why an electrician is visiting the brothel,” adding that “all of you” are “chauvinists”.

The GoM headed by Home Minister Shivraj Patil comprises, apart from Chowdhury, Minister for Science & Technology Kapil Sibal, Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss, and Minister for Social Justice & Empowerment Meira Kumar, among others.

Asked about the incident, one of the ministers present at the meeting sought to brush it aside. “You know how she is. But I don’t think she used the term chauvinist. She said ‘all you males’,” he told The Indian Express.

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