Shashi Tharoor put out a tweet on March 8, advocating the idea of menstrual leaves on the occasion of International’s Women’s Day. The tweet, since then, has garnered some strong and opposing tweets from women everywhere with some of the most prominent names being Barkha Dutt and Sharmistha Mukherjee.

In his tweet, Tharoor shared a petition for “gender-inclusive workplaces in India” and wrote: “Do you support menstrual leave for women at public and private workplaces?”

Once the tweet was up, reactions started to pour in almost immediately. Most notably, Barkha Dutt challenged this notion. Dutt, who has voiced her opinion multiple times on this very same topic, tweeted, “menstrual leave ghettoises women, becomes one more excuse to close certain professional doors on women and treats the monthly period as a grand event instead of routine biology”.

Congress’ national spokesperson Sharmistha Mukherjee and its national media panellist Shama Mohamed also joined the brigade against him.

(Header Credit – Shashi Tharoor’s official Instagram page)