Who Is Lakshmi Puri? 10 Things We Know About The Former Diplomat

In June, activist Saket Gokhale allegedly referred to certain property Lakshmi Puri purchased in Switzerland and also referred to her husband Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri in his tweets. The Delhi High Court asked the activist to delete the alleged defamatory tweets.

These tweets were seen as defamatory because the right to reputation is recognised as a fundamental right. The Delhi High Court asked Gokhale how he could vilify people this way, particularly when the facts put out were incorrect until proved otherwise. On Tuesday, July 13, the High Court further asked the activist to delete the tweets. It also restrained him from posting such "defamatory or scandalous or factually incorrect tweets" against her or her husband. Justice C Hari Shanker directed the microblogging site Twitter to remove the tweets if  the activist fails to delete them within 24 hours of order.

Here is a  look at who is Lakshmi Puri and 10 things we know about the Ex Diplomat:

1. Lakshmi Puri is a former Assistant Secretary-General at the UN and the ex-Deputy Executive Director of UN Women. Earlier, she served as an Indian diplomat for 28 years. Puri joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1974 and served in Japan, Sri Lanka, Switzerland (Geneva). She was India's Ambassador to Hungary and accredited to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
2. Puri served as the Under-Secretary on the Japan and Korea desk at the ministry of External Affairs headquarters, Delhi. Later, she served as the Under-Secretary on the Pakistan desk. For six years, Puri served as the Joint-Secretary Economic Division and Multilateral Economic Relations.
3. She played an important role in negotiating many of India's bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral economic diplomacy initiatives. These include Indo-ASEAN Dialogue Partnership, Indian-Ocean Rim Association, Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation as well as Group of 15.
4. The diplomat joined the United Nations in 2002 and continued with her work of trade and economic policy as the Director of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD) flagship division on Trade in goods, services and commodities. From 2007 to 2009, she served as the Acting Deputy Secretary-General of UNCTAD.
5. From 2009 to 2011, Puri was the Director of United Nations Office of the High Representative for the latest Developed Countries, also Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States in New York.
6. In 2011, Lakshmi Puri was appointed as the Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and Deputy Executive Director of the pioneering global entity for the promotion of gender equality and women empowerment- UN Women.
7. She is the recipient of several awards such as the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights, Millennium Campus Award 2015 and Novus Award for Championing the Sustainable Development Goals (Novus Summit).
8. Besides being a diplomat, Puri is also the author of several reports and research papers. Some of her works include Driving the Gender-Responsive Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Aid for Trade: Global and Regional perspectives, Multilateralism and South-South Cooperation etc.
9. She is the editor of the works Addressing the Global Energy Crisis and Interface between Trade & Climate Change.
10. Puri earned her Bachelor's in History degree from Punjab University and her Master's degree from the University of Delhi. Married to Hardeep Singh Puri, the couple has two daughters.