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.

When asked if she called the ministers “chauvinists”, Choudhury laughed it off. “There may be a difference of opinion, but we have to come to some conclusion. We are meeting soon and I hope that we finally set things right,” said the firebrand minister who had once created a sensation by driving a tractor into the Parliament complex.

Portraying prostitutes as “victims” instead of “offenders”, the proposed amendments will treat a client of a prostitute as a criminal, liable to a jail term of up to seven years. Under the present law, while women in the trade are punished for “seduction”, the clients go scot-free. The proposed amendment seeks the removal of Section 8 (“seducing or soliciting for the purpose of prostitution”) under which prostitutes are booked by the police.