#MeToo effect: MJ Akbar seeks to meet MEA Sushma Swaraj

Junior foreign minister MJ Akbar, facing allegations of sexual harassment levelled by at least 12 women, returned from his overseas trip on Sunday.

According to reports, Akbar met Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj later in the day to explain his position, amid growing clamour for his resignation from the cabinet.

Writing in the Vogue Magazine in October last year, journalist Priya Ramani recalled a meeting with then editor MJ Akbar at a hotel in Mumbai, in which she accused Akbar of making inappropriate advances. She hadn’t named Akbar back then.

“I escaped that night, you hired me, I worked for you for many months even though I swore I would never be in a room with you alone,” Ramani had recounted in her magazine piece.

Fast forward to October 2018, the allegations against Akbar have surfaced all over again, after Ramani revealed that it was Akbar who she wrote about last year.

After which, at least 11 women, many of them journalists, came out with accounts against MJ Akbar, prompting calls for his resignation from the Congress and other parties.

Also, Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi has called for an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against Minister of State (MoS) External Affairs MJ Akbar, becoming the first government minister to do so.

Whereas Foriegn Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, has evaded questions on him and so has union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

(The earlier version of this story said that Akbar had resigned from the Union Cabinet. The story has now been updated).