As the Members of Parliament moved into the new building heralding new beginnings in the Special Session of Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose the Women’s Reservation Bill as the first to be presented in the Lok Sabha.
The prime minister appealed to all members to pass the Bill — called the ‘Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam’ — unanimously. Stuck for more than two decades, the Bill came the closest to reality in 2010 when Congress-led UPA government managed to get it passed in the Rajya Sabha but failed to do so in the Lok Sabha.
A game-charger in Indian politics and women empowerment and representation, the Bill seeks to reserve 33 per cent seats in the Lok Sabha and all state assemblies and includes the quota to the seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
Leader of the Congress in the House Adhir Ranjan said on Tuesday that Women’s Reservation Bill was first brought in in 1989 by the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi to ensure one-third reservation for women in local body elections. Speaking in the new Lok Sabha, PM Modi, meanwhile, said he was the “chosen one” to “empower and strengthen women”.
Caught off guard by the Modi government’s move, coming as it does on the eve of the crucial 2024 general elections, various opposition parties have been re-calibrating their stand.
As envisaged by the Modi government, 33 per cent reservation of seats for women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies will come into effect only after a delimitation exercise and the next census. It is plain for every stakeholder that these two exercises cannot be achieved ahead of 2024 elections.
AAP minister and the only woman in the Delhi cabinet, Atishi, said the move was aimed at “fooling people”.
“The 91st amendment in the Constitution makes it clear that delimitation at the national level cannot happen before 2026. This means the much tom-tommed Women’s Reservation Bill can be implemented at the earliest only in 2027 or 2028. This is not going to happen in 2024. So when we read the provisions of the Bill, we understand that there is an attempt to fool the women of this country. We demand of the BJP and PM Narendra Modi that this Bill introduced in the House may be amended and without waiting for delimitation or census, reservation for women be implemented in the upcoming 2024 general elections.”
AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh went a step further and said: “This is not the Women’s Reservation Bill but the ‘Mahila Bewakoof Banau Bill’. Anti-women BJP has brought one more ‘jumla’ in the name of the Bill.”
The apprehensions expressed by CPI(M) Politburo member Brinda Karat were similar. “Women’s Reservation Bill was promised by the BJP before the 2014 elections. Nine years have passed and they have not implemented that promise. Now, in the fag-end of their second term, they have brought this Bill.”
Karat added: “What is this Bill? It just ensures that, in fact, women are going to be deprived till the next census, till the next delimitation exercise. In other words, in the 2024 elections and in the Constitution of the 18th Lok Sabha, we will not have one-third women members in Parliament. This delayed action by the Modi government has ensured, once again, inequality for women for the next so many years.”
Priyanka Chaturvedi, Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Rajya Sabha MP, echoed Karat. Arguing that PM Modi had promised reservation in 2014 and it was in the BJP manifesto, yet the Bill was presented after nine-and-a-half years, Chaturvedi said: “When a Bill becomes a law, it is implemented immediately. It is sad that when the Bill was presented, there were terms and conditions that though we will pass the Bill, it will be implemented only after delimitation. There is already a battle being fought in the South over delimitation and on the back of the new census, which was supposed to begin in 2021 but is yet to take off, you have given yet another ‘jumla’ to the women.”
Even as the Congress and the BJP sparred to take credit for the Women’s Reservation Bill, historic as its passing will be, many in opposition ranks are questioning the inevitable delay in implementing it, given the pre-conditions in the much-awaited landmark Bill.
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