New Delhi, Apr 14 (PTI) A group of activists on Tuesday questioned why delimitation is required to implement reservation for women in legislative bodies and demanded that it should be implemented on the basis of the current strength of the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
At a press conference here, activist Anjali Bhardwaj, Annie Raja of the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW), advocate Prashant Bhushan, economist Santosh Mehrotra, social activist Bhanwar Meghwanshi, along with former Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed, urged the government to hold wider consultations on proposed legislations on women reservation and delimitation, including taking the opinion of women’s movements.
Addressing the press conference, Bhardwaj questioned the delay in sharing the draft legislations with the MPs, as she also pointed out that those are still not in the public domain.
A bill to “operationalise” 33 per cent reservation to women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies by increasing the strength of the Lower House of Parliament to up to 850 from the present 543 is set for introduction in Parliament on Thursday.
“The laws will fundamentally re-shape India’s electoral democracy and impact every voter in the country. Information about the proposed laws is reaching people only through media reports based on sources. This is a flagrant violation of people’s fundamental right to information and the principles laid out in the Pre-legislative Consultation Policy,” Bhardwaj said.
She said the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act — Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam — needs a single amendment to delink it from the census and delimitation and make it operational with immediate effect at the current strength of the legislatures.
Raja said women’s movements have been demanding reservation for women for decades. She recounted that in 2010, a bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha but was not brought to the Lok Sabha.
“Everyone must understand that the bill was not brought because suddenly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi became sensitive to women’s demands, but because the Supreme Court had made strong observations in the case that the NFIW had filed seeking implementation of women’s reservation. The NFIW had challenged the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act as it linked the issue of reservation with census and delimitation,” she said.
“We strongly reject and oppose the undermining of electoral democracy in India through a politically-motivated delimitation, which is being brought on the back of women’s reservation,” Raja said.
Bhushan accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of consistently undermining the functioning of Parliament and slammed it over not sending bills to parliamentary committees.
“The government, by linking all the issues together, is attempting to bring the controversial delimitation bill, which would electorally benefit the BJP,” he said.
Bhushan added that the hurried manner in which a special session of Parliament has been convened from April 16 to April 18 in the middle of state elections, when political parties are busy campaigning, is a complete “farce on democracy”.
Hameed recounted the decades-long struggle for women’s reservation and said women organisations and leaders had undertaken an all-India train yatra, collecting lakhs of signatures on a piece cloth.
“The manner in which two days later we will see Parliament take up these bills, which the country has not seen or engaged with, is a sham. This is not the way to strengthen or empower women,” she said.
Mehrotra said if four opposition parties — Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), Samajwadi Party (SP) and DMK — come together, the bills can be defeated in the Lok Sabha.
Noting that the number of seats in the Lok Sabha will increase to 850 once the amendments are implemented, he said India’s Lower House would become the biggest globally.
“There are serious concerns about the functioning of the institution of Parliament. We have an average of 55 sittings per year as compared to nearly 150 in the early decades after independence,” he said.
Mehrotra added that there is very little robust debate or deliberation on laws at present and increasing the size of Parliament will make it even more chaotic.
Meghwanshi pointed out that there is no information on whether the reservation will have quotas within the quota for the Other Backward Classes (OBC) and other marginalised communities.
The government plans to bring a Constitution amendment bill, a bill on the delimitation law and an enabling bill for Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Puducherry — three Union territories with legislature — in the Lok Sabha on Thursday to fast-track the implementation of the women’s reservation law of 2023. PTI AO MHS RC
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