In 2010, the SP and RJD opposed the UPA govt’s move to turn the women’s reservation bill into law.
New Delhi: While most political parties are in favour of increasing representation of women in the candidate selection process, the Samajwadi Party has taken a contrarian stand on the issue.
Political parties have the ultimate right to choose which seats to give to women and the Election Commission cannot have a say in this regard, representatives of the SP are learnt to have said during their discussions with the poll panel Monday.
The SP’s intervention is significant given the party’s own record of opposing the women’s reservation bill when the UPA-II had sought to enforce it as a law in 2010.
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“Most political parties were in-principle in support of the idea of bringing greater representation of women…But the Samajwadi Party said that only parties can decide the candidates and their seats,” an official in the poll panel said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
In its agenda for the meeting held in the capital, the Election Commission had sought to address the issue by seeking views of political parties on how women’s representation can be increased within their organisational structures as well in the means of selection of candidates.
“Anyway, Parliament has to bring about the amendment, we had simply sought the views of the parties on the matter…So it will be parties that will have to bring about a law like they did in case of representation of women in local body elections,” the official said.
In 2010, along with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the SP had opposed the women’s reservation bill, asking instead for “reservation within reservation”. The parties had favoured reservation for Muslim women, women from backward classes and Dalit women.
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In 2010, when the bill was tabled in the Rajya Sabha, then SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav had infamously said, “The women reservation bill, if passed in present format, would provoke young men to whistle in Parliament.”
While the bill providing for 33 per cent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies was passed in the Rajya Sabha, it has been put in cold storage since.
Of course ! akhilesh Yadav is right. Because there are still young sons, grandsons, nephews and grandnephews of Samajwadi Party patriarchs who will get married in future and their wives have to enter Parliament and State Assemblies of the party tickets. If EC forces action now, the future of these future ‘women’ will be jeopardized !
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