Who is Maneka Guruswamy, the first lesbian MP to reach Rajya Sabha from West Bengal?

Updated: 10-03-2026, 07.18 PM

What is the news?

Five Rajya Sabha MPs were elected from West Bengal on Monday, including four from Trinamool Congress (TMC) and one from BJP. In these, TMC had made senior advocate Maneka Guruswamy its candidate, who was elected unopposed. After the victory, Guruswamy has become the first homosexual MP of the country. Apart from Guruswamy, Babul Supriyo, Rajeev Kumar, Koel Mallick from TMC and Rahul Sinha from BJP have been elected unopposed. Who is Maneka Guruswamy? Come, let us know.

Maneka’s father was in BJP

Maneka is a Supreme Court lawyer. He was born in 1974 in Hyderabad. His father Mohan Guruswamy has been a special advisor to former BJP leader Yashwant Sinha. Maneka came to Delhi with her family at the age of 11. He has studied and researched law at the National Law School, Oxford and Harvard Law School. She clerked with Attorney General Ashok Desai in 1997 and has been practicing law in the Supreme Court since 2002.

Maneka is openly in a lesbian relationship

Maneka had announced her lesbian relationship in July 2019. He is in a relationship with Supreme Court lawyer Arundhati Katju since 2018. Both of them had fought the case of Section 377, which gives legal validity to homosexuality. They had revealed their relationship on an international news channel. Maneka is unmarried. She has been included in Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Foreign Policy’s 100 Global Thinkers and Forbes India Women-Powered Trailblazers (2019).

Fought many major cases

Maneka fought with Arundhati and argued in the Supreme Court to decriminalize Section 377. He declared 25 percent reservation in private schools as constitutional under the Right to Education. In 2011, Maneka declared Salwa Judum illegal in Chhattisgarh and got bail for former Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi in the AgustaWestland bribery case. He has advised the United Nations, UNICEF and the constitution making of Nepal.