Wading into the Sabarimala temple entry row today, Union Minister Smriti Irani stirred the hornet's nest.

"I have the right to pray, but no right to desecrate. I am nobody to speak on the Supreme Court verdict as I am a serving cabinet minister. Would you take sanitary napkins seeped in menstrual blood into a friend's home? No. Why take them into the house of God?" she asked, inviting flak.

She was speaking at an event in Mumbai. She said that, once, she had to wait outside a fire temple, with her son inside.

The comments are drawing widespread flak. "Shameful comment by Smriti Irani. Is menstruating woman only a sanitary pad for this lady? When she has periods, doesn't she go out of her house? Doesn't go 2 her friend's place? Without periods, can there be babies? Horrible words reinforcing patriarchy and misogyny by a Minister!" a tweeple remarked.