the Congress apparently due to a strain in relationship with Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Later she alleged that she was personally humiliated by Sonia Gandhi. She declared that she was leaving the party due to the problems with party leadership. In 2007, BJP-led NDA fielded her as a candidate in the elections for the Vice-President of India, which was won by Hamid Ansari. She was a member of Rajya Sabha, representing Rajasthan for BJP from July 2004 to July 2010. She was nominated by the BJP for the Rajya Sabha in 2012 from Madhya Pradesh, and assumed her office on 24 April 2012 upon election. Under Nitin Gadkari as BJP President, she became one of the 13 vice-presidents of the BJP in 2010, where later when Rajnath Singh took over, she was made a member of the party's national executive. Heptulla served as the Minister of Minority Affairs in Prime minister Narendra Modi's cabinet from 26 May 2014 to 12 July 2016. She said that minorities needed a level playing field in Indian society, but reservation is not the solution as it kills the spirit of competition. She resigned from her positions as a minister and a member of Rajya Sabha in 2016 when she was nominated Governor of Manipur. Heptulla was nominated to head the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, ICCR. She also presided over the women parliamentarians' group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1993 and became founder president of the parliamentarians' forum for human development the same year. She was also elected President of Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), a Geneva-based international organisation at Council's 165th session in Berlin in 1999. She held the post from 16 October 1999 to 27 September 2002. Subsequently, in 2002, at Council's 171st session, she was chosen the Honorary President of the IPU Council. Heptulla was nominated by the United Nations Development Programme as its human development ambassador. Heptulla led a delegation to the UN Commission on Status of Women in 1997. Heptulla has authored book on AIDS titled "AIDS: Approaches to Prevention". She has also written on human social security, sustainable development, environment, reforms for women and on ties between India and west Asia. Heptulla faced charges of having morphed a 1958 photograph to show her along with Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in a publication of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR). The controversial photograph was published in an ICCR publication titled