 "Women, gender, politics, female, democracy, women reservation, parliament")
The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed the Constitution (128th Amendment) Bill, 2023 – the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam – which seeks to reserve a third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies for women. Union Home Minister Amit Shah indicated in the House that the provision may be implemented by 2029.
Shah said the next government would conduct the census immediately after the 2024 elections, and the delimitation exercise subsequently, to set the process to reserve seats for women in motion. Sources said the delimitation exercise was frozen till 2026 under Article 82 of the Constitution.
The government had blamed the Covid-19 pandemic for deferring the 2021 census exercise.
To the Opposition’s demand that the proposed law be implemented for the 2024 polls, Shah argued that the delimitation commission needed to identify seats to be reserved for women to ensure the integrity of the process. He said such a course of action would prevent allegations against the government that it had a role in reserving, for example, the Wayanad or Hyderabad seats -- the constituencies represented by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi, respectively.
To the Opposition’s demand for a quota for OBC (other backward class) women, Shah indicated there was no such provision, stating that the Bill envisaged reserving a third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and Assemblies for the general category, which included OBCs, the Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes. Urging the House to pass it unanimously, Shah said any shortcomings could be rectified later.
The Lok Sabha passed the Bill with the requisite majority needed for a constitution amendment, with 454 ayes and two voting against it.
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The Rajya Sabha is set to take up the Bill on Thursday. The Lok Sabha saw 60 MPs participate in the debate. The debate and the subsequent voting, which lasted for over nine hours, reflected the likely contours of the ruling alliance and the Opposition's planks for the forthcoming electoral battles.
The Opposition urged the government to include an OBC quota for women in the Bill, with Rahul Gandhi demanding a caste census, flagging how only three of the 90 secretaries of government were OBCs, while Shah highlighted Prime Minister Narendra Modi's contribution to women's empowerment, from BJP's Vadodara national executive in 1994, where the party reserved a third of its posts for women, and also first as the Gujarat chief minister and now as the country's prime minister, rolling out pro-women schemes.
Congress parliamentary party chief Sonia Gandhi reminded the House that her husband, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, pioneered women's reservation in 1989, terming the day an emotional moment of her life. She said it was unfair to the country's women that they would have to wait another few years for the reservation, demanding immediate implementation and a sub-quota for OBC women. Several Opposition MPs termed the Bill a "poll gimmick". BJP's ally, the Apna Dal's Anupriya Patel, a Union minister, backed the demand for a quota within quota for OBC women. She expressed confidence that the PM will develop some steps to protect the interest of women from backward classes.
DMK's Kanimozhi flagged southern India's concerns on the delimitation exercise. Echoing her brother, Tamil Nadu CM M K Stalin, she likened delimitation to "the Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of Tamil Nadu and south India" since it will double the Lok Sabha seats of some of the Hindi heartland states and keep that of Tamil Nadu and other southern states and current levels. She said delimitation was a political conspiracy to lower the political representation of southern India.
Responding to Rahul Gandhi's criticism on poor representation of the OBCs among secretaries, Shah said the BJP, and not the Congress, had given the country an OBC PM in Modi, that 85 of the party's MPs were OBCs, the highest of all parties, as were 29 of its ministers and 27 per cent of its legislators in states. Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said the delimitation exercise was necessary lest the law, once enacted, lead to judicial challenge, pointing to Article 82, which mandates delimitation in 2026 based on the latest census data.
The debate witnessed members quoting from literature, mythology and history. Trinamool Congress' Mahua Moitra termed the Bill a "women's reservation rescheduling bill" and asserted that action was needed, not the "placebo of legislatively-mandated procrastination". Quoting from Mahatma Gandhi's description of the Cripps Mission, she said, "It is a post-dated cheque drawn on a failing bank".
AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi opposed the Bill, saying it would provide reservation only to "savarna women", and questioned why OBC and Muslim women with even lesser representation in Parliament are not being given any quota. Owaisi is one of two AIMIM MPs in the Lok Sabha.
