Sushma Swaraj, indian soldiers in uae
Sushma SwarajReuters

Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj was named one of the 15 'Global Thinkers' of the year "for fashioning a novel brand of Twitter diplomacy".

The other world leaders named in the list includes Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel, Justin Trudeau and Ban Ki-Moon. The list includes eight women and seven men.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Swaraj on Wednesday.

"Very proud to see our hardworking EAM @SushmaSwaraj part of the @ForeignPolicy Global Thinkers list 2016! Congrats," he tweeted to the minister, who is currently recovering in hospital after going through a kidney transplant.

The 64-year-old has been working even while hospitalised last week. She helped the world's heaviest woman to reach India from Cairo to get a bariatric surgery so she could get a second chance at life. She also helped an Indian man, who had walked 1,000km, stranded in Dubai for two years to reach home.

From helping honeymooning couples to hundreds of Indian workers stranded in Gulf countries, she has facilitated many who tweeted to her.

Apart from the Egyptian woman, she also helped a British couple whose child born of surrogacy had not received a visa after surrogacy was banned in India. The couple had been trying to take their child to the Uk with them.

"In July, Sushma Swaraj, India's external affairs minister, tweeted to roughly 6 million followers that 10,000 Indian workers employed inside the kingdom faced a 'food crisis.' What followed was a weeks-long social media operation in which Swaraj posted information for migrants about rations provided by the Indian Embassy, claims for unpaid wages, and government-organised transportation home," wrote Foreign Policy. This incident was why the magazine put her on the list of influential decision-makers of 2016.

She has been named "the common tweeple's leader" for her aggressive use of Twitter, the magazine said. Swaraj had tweeted about her renal failure and that she would need a transplant when she was admitted to AIIMS. Many people offered their organ to her after that.

She was transferred from the ICU to a private room on Tuesday and is recovering well, doctors had said.