Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi has sought to engage Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani in a gender issue, asking Irani to explain her silence in what is called the "sulli deals" controversy. 

Chaturvedi question to Irani: Why has the Minister not publicly condemned the incident and why have investigations remained at a standstill in the case despite two different FIRs having separately been filed by the Delhi and the UP police sixty days ago? "There are some issues that should rise above politics. More so for an individual who holds a constitutional position of heading the ministry of women's and child development, Chaturvedi said. 

The case relates to charges of selective misogyny targeting Muslim women, whose photographs were uploaded by an unidentified group on an App using GitHub by the name of "Sulli deals". Sulla or Sulli is a derogatory term used to refer to Muslims. The App has since been removed by GitHub. " The cause here is much bigger than any political agenda, which has sadly been ignored", Chaturvedi said. 

Police FIRs have been routinely lodged by the Yogi Adityanath government against political opponents including the AIMIM chief Asad Ud Din Owesi and media persons critical of the state government's performance. But progress of investigations have been selective. In the Sulli deals case, not a single case has been made out by the investigating agencies so far. In a letter to IT Minister Ashwini Vaibhaw in July,the Shiv Sena MP has asked that - if the government could summon social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter - why could the same not be done for GitHub? "The solution cannot be that the government has banned the App. If this is banned, something else will come up. Where does this end? Why are the cops refusing to take the case to the logical conclusion", Chaturvedi asked. 

Several Muslim women including poet-activist Nabiya Khan and Kolkata resident Noor Mehvish have lodged FIRs in the case.