Speaking on the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha last week, Home Minister Amit Shah rebutted the opposition’s criticism about not implementing it immediately.
“If we decide (reserved seats) and Kerala’s Wayanad (Rahul Gandhi’s constituency) or Hyderabad seat (Asaduddin Owaisi’s constituency) gets reserved, what will the people say? Owaisi saheb will say that politics has been played. To ensure non-partisanship in this, delimitation commission has been brought in,” said Shah.
Well, in 2019, Gandhi’s constituency had 6.84 lakh female electors, about 14,000 more than their male counterparts. While the number of electors isn’t the same as the population, it can give a broad picture of gender ratios in constituencies. If population in particular constituencies were to be the criterion for reserving them for women, Wayanad would become a reserved seat.
The same could happen to 117 other seats where female electors were in a majority in 2019 —18 out of 25 in Andhra Pradesh, 11 out of 17 in Telangana, 19 out of 20 in Kerala, 34 out of 39 in Tamil Nadu and 10 out of 28 seats in Karnataka. There was not a single such seat in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan in 2019.
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Ifs and buts
The BJP wouldn’t mind women’s quota disrupting the political calculations of dominant parties in South India. But that won’t necessarily be the case. If and when the delimitation commission is set up, the gender ratio in constituencies won’t perforce determine whether or not they would be reserved. For the allocation of seats for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), the proportion of these communities in a state’s population formed the basis. But that can’t be the criterion in allocating seats for women in Lok Sabha and assemblies because the 33 per cent quota for them has to be rotational.
After every delimitation exercise, these seats will change every third election. That is if the census is conducted every 10 years and delimitation is done after that. It’s a big ‘if’, of course.
There are already many ‘ifs’ when it comes to the very first stage of implementation. The 128th Constitution Amendment Bill says that reservation of seats will come into force after delimitation is undertaken “for this purpose”. That can happen only when the figures for the first census taken after the commencement of this Act have been published.
In 2001, relevant articles of the Constitution were amended to provide that no fresh readjustment of constituencies could be undertaken until the figures of the “first census taken after the year 2026” were published. So, if the census is conducted right after the 2024 Lok Sabha election and not after 2026, will the delimitation exercise be in sync with the legislation brought by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 2001? The Modi government can, of course, make further amendments to change the post-2026 clause, but the ruling party speakers repeatedly invoked the 2026 freeze during debates in the recent special session of Parliament. Or is it that delimitation will be done on the basis of 2024-25 census figures “for this purpose” only — to provide for women’s reservation, leaving the overall readjustment of constituencies that has been pending for 50 years for later? And what did Amit Shah exactly mean when he said in the Lok Sabha that reservation will be implemented “only after 2029”?
There are too many ambiguities about the Women’s Reservation Bill at this stage. And one hasn’t even factored in the possibility of legal challenges to the delimitation commission’s report and how much delay it may cause.
Be that as it may, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has good reasons to hope that reservation will give women another reason to rally behind PM Modi and the party in the 2023 assembly polls and the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Whether they will or won’t is a matter of conjecture and speculation.
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Flipside for BJP
Ifs and buts aside, the women’s quota legislation poses challenges too. Given the sword of delimitation hanging on their heads, members of Parliament in the next Lok Sabha won’t have any incentive to work in their constituencies. Who knows what will happen after delimitation? That will be the case for MPs from all parties. But it’s especially so for BJP MPs, most of who win not because of who they are or what they have done for the people but because of only one factor — Modi.
So, think of the scenario in 2029.
Many sitting male MPs will have spent all their time after 2024, making alternative plans if their constituencies get reserved for women. They may hope to get lucky, but it can’t be an incentive to work for the people for five years. There will be many others, including female candidates, contesting elections for the first time in 2029. All of them will be banking on Modi’s popularity. It’s not just his persona as a saint-like leader that makes him popular among women voters. The PM’s schemes such as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, free ration during Covid-19, piped water, and a host of others have touched their lives. There is no other leader in the BJP who has that ‘connect’ with women voters yet. That’s also the reason why he will remain the party’s only hope if he gets a third term in office in 2024 but fails to deliver on women’s quota by 2029. PM Modi turned 73 last week.
There are, of course, other BJP leaders like UP CM Yogi Adityanath, his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma, and a few others who have shown potential. But can they replace Modi in his women constituency? Yogi has transformed himself, of course. He doesn’t have the rabble-rouser image that he had before he became the CM. He has let his anti-Romeo squads fall into oblivion while launching programmes like Mission Shakti to encourage women entrepreneurs and earn their goodwill through programmes like One District One Product. Yet, as of now, Yogi needs to do a lot more to earn the kind of goodwill that Modi has among women voters.
Why BJP needs to reinvent image
As a party, the BJP can’t afford to have a patriarchal image when female electors are positively responding to its outreach, women’s quota being the latest. The BJP’s refusal to act against its MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh despite serious allegations by celebrated female wrestlers and against Haryana minister Sandeep Singh, accused of sexual harassment, are the two cases in point. It gives an impression of the party as a patriarchal organisation. As my colleague Neelam Pandey reports, there is dismal representation of women in the BJP: No woman among eight national general secretaries, only one in the 11-member parliamentary board, two out of 36 state/Union territory presidents, and none among 12 CMs and deputy CMs.
There are only two women in PM Modi’s 28-member Cabinet — Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman and Minister for Women & Child Development Smriti Irani.
Prominent faces sidelined
Take a look at the number of public meetings the BJP asked them to address and how it celebrated them as the party’s faces in Karnataka. Sitharaman, regarded as a competent finance minister by many experts and analysts, didn’t even figure in the BJP’s list of 40 star campaigners in Himachal Pradesh.
As for Smriti Irani, despite being a ‘giant-killer’ in Amethi and generally acknowledged as a smart politician, has been given a relatively low-profile women and child development and minority affairs ministry. She has been tossed around as a minister — from HRD to textiles to information & broadcasting to WCD ministries.
As for other women leaders, BJP insiders tell me that PM Modi hasn’t granted requests for a one-on-one meeting with Vasundhara Raje, former Rajasthan CM, for the past year. The reason: She didn’t follow the command of the party bosses in Delhi during her term. “They can’t tolerate an independent woman,” a Rajasthani politician told me. So much is the peeve against her independence and mass base that her son, Dushyant Singh, a Doon School and St. Stephen’s College alumnus, has been given no responsibility in the party or the government despite the fact that he has won all four Lok Sabha elections since 2004.
Look at Uma Bharti who led the BJP to a sweeping victory in the 2003 Madhya Pradesh assembly election. She had to resign as the CM the following year in connection with the Hubli riot case. Even after the Congress government in Karnataka withdrew the case a few months later, she was never reinstalled as the CM.
Out of 11 BJP national presidents since 1980, when the party was formed, not a single woman has occupied the top post.
Sumitra Mahajan, Speaker of the last Lok Sabha, has been sidelined—so much so that she has been left pleading for a party ticket for her son, Mandhar.
The BJP’s past record in terms of women’s empowerment within the organisation is, obviously, not great. Women have been increasingly voting for the BJP but it’s more for PM Modi. The BJP can’t afford to be ambiguous about the timeframe for the implementation of women’s quota—unless, of course, the party is convinced that PM Modi will be around to blunt the backlash and lead it in 2029, 2034, and much beyond.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)