New Delhi: As supporters gathered around Union law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal Friday, congratulating him for his role in the passing of the women’s reservation bill in Parliament this week, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader credited “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership” for the historic legislation.
In an interview to ThePrint, given at his New Delhi residence Friday, the law minister said “it was PM Modi who took the decision for the passage of the long-pending bill”. Meghwal had returned home at 2 am in the wee hours of Friday, after the Rajya Sabha cleared the bill which was introduced by him.
Titled Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, the bill was passed in the Lok Sabha Wednesday with a majority of 454 to 2, while it sailed through the Rajya Sabha with 214 votes late Thursday.
The law that proposes to reserve one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women, will be implemented after a delimitation exercise to redraw parliamentary and assembly constituencies based on the latest census, which the government has said will be commissioned next year.
The Constitution calls for the reallocation of seats after every Census. However, because of decisions taken by subsequent governments and Parliaments — starting with Indira Gandhi in 1976 and then Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2002 — the last such exercise was carried out after the 1971 Census. According to the Constitution (84th Amendment) Act, 2002, there is a freeze on readjustment of constituencies till the first Census after 2026.
The Congress has said this in effect means that the reservation will only be implemented by the 2029 Lok Sabha elections or later, while some opposition parties like Aam Aadmi Party have demanded that it be implemented for next year’s general elections.
Meghwal, a three-time BJP MP from Rajasthan’s Bikaner, who was made law minister this year, spoke on a variety of issues relating to the bill, including the Congress’ criticism over its delayed implementation, demand for a other backward classes (OBC) quota within the reservation for women and whether the ruling BJP at the Centre would use it as a poll plank in next year’s Lok Sabha elections.
As of now, the bill allows for a quota for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) but not for the OBCs.
“Early implementation of the law, as demanded by the opposition parties, was not possible before census and delimitation. The opposition is raising this issue with a political motive,” Meghwal alleged.
He further said that the Modi government had brought the bill “after holistic legal consultation” and “consensus on it was not made in a single day”.
When asked whether the passing of the law would be used in the BJP’s campaign for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Meghwal said: “It’s not a question of politics. It should not be linked to politics.”
The law minister added: “Many people linked the triple talaq bill [a law banning the practice introduced by the BJP government] to politics as well, but it’s a question of empowering women. Whether it’s the triple talaq bill or women’s reservation bill, the way of working of the prime minister is to empower women and motherhood.”
On a question about the BJP’s political rivals suggesting that the party should allocate 33 percent seats in its organisation and in ticket allocation to women, to boost their representation, the minister told ThePrint, “we welcome this suggestion and we have implemented the same in our organisation”.
“Affirmative action should definitely be taken for more representation of women in the party organisation,” he asserted.
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‘Congress did not have courage to pass Bill’
The issue of women’s reservation has been pending for 27 years owing to lack of consensus, after a bill for the same was first tabled in Parliament by the Deve Gowda government in 1996, then reintroduced by the Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, and then by the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
Meghwal spoke at length about the BJP’s “long-standing efforts to get the Bill passed” when he was asked whether the government had thought about the move suddenly.
“The idea of the bill had been pending from Deve Gowda ji’s time, then Atal ji tried to get it passed but the bill lapsed with the dissolution of the Lok Sabha,” he said.
Referring to the Joint Parliamentary Committee led by Geeta Mukherjee which had examined the 1996 Bill and made seven recommendations, Meghwal said that pressure was subsequently built for the passing of the Bill.
In the 12th Lok Sabha in 1998, the Vajpayee government pushed the bill, then again in 1999, 2002 and 2003, but it failed to get support and lapsed, said Meghwal.
The law minister added: “Then the UPA government came and they tabled the bill (in 2008 in the Rajya Sabha), but they could not build consensus during their time”.
That time, the bill was opposed by Lalu Prasad’s RJD, then a constituent of the Congress-led UPA, and the Samajwadi Party, also an ally at the time.
The bill was again introduced in the Rajya Sabha by the UPA government in 2010, and passed by the upper house of Parliament. It was, however, not introduced in the Lok Sabha. The RJD and SP were giving outside support to the UPA government at the time.
Talking about the response to the bill at the time, Meghwal said, “ugly scenes had emerged in the Rajya Sabha when several members had reached the table of (then) chairman Hamid Ansari. And due to protests from their alliance partners, the UPA did not table the bill in the Lok Sabha.”
He alleged that “due to pressure from (SP chief) Mulayam Singh Yadav, Sharad Yadav (Janata Dal United) and Lalu Prasadji, they did not show courage to bring the bill in the Lok Sabha”.
Meghwal added that “although (Congress leader) Sonia Gandhiji has now said ‘it’s my bill’, they (Congress) did not get success in generating consensus on it”.
Compared to this, he asserted, the BJP has been asking for women’s reservation since the days of the Jan Sangh (precursor to the BJP).
“The BJP executive has passed a resolution for greater representation of women in the party unit,” he told ThePrint.
According to Meghwal, it was during Rajnath Singh’s tenure as BJP president in 2007 that the party decided to give 33 reservations to women in the organisation.
“Nirmala Sitharamanji said yesterday (Thursday) in the Rajya Sabha that she is a beneficiary of that reservation in the party. She rose in the party after it decided to give greater representation to women. She first became a spokesperson and rose to become finance minister,” Meghwal said.
Meghwal further told ThePrint that the late BJP leader Sushma Swaraj had “many times told Sonia ji in the Lok Sabha that the BJP was ready to support the Congress if they brought the women’s reservation Bill, but the Congress was fearing to pass it as the UPA government would have fallen.”
“The Congress had to choose between being in power and giving reservation to women during the UPA’s time and they chose power,” he alleged.
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‘Every aspect of law has been considered’
Asked about the Congress terming the Bill “a post-dated cheque drawn on a failing bank” and alleged that it had been brought for election purpose, Meghwal said “this is not true”.
“They are not trying to understand. In the Modi government, every aspect of the law has been considered — who will support it, who will oppose, the technical and legal issues, etc,” he added.
“We had been considering the bill for a long time and consensus is not generated in a day. The PM works in a holistic way before taking decisions, and it was due to his charismatic leadership that consensus was made,” the law minister reiterated, asking “why did the UPA not get success in consensus?”
Explaining why the law was not being implemented right away, Meghwal said, “Criticising is part of the opposition plans, but tell me one thing, census is part of the bill and delimitation has been frozen till 2026. We have not given these orders”.
“Immediate implementation was not possible knowing the legal point of view,” he told ThePrint, asking “how would seats have been reserved? It’s not the government’s job to reserve seats. They will be reserved by the Delimitation Commission only”.
“Amit Shahji said in the Lok Sabha that ‘if we reserved Wayanad constituency for women, then they would have said it was done for political reasons’ [The Wayanad seat is held by Congress’s Rahul Gandhi]. Whichever SC/ST seat will be reserved in assembly and Lok Sabha, it will be reserved by Delimitation Commission,” he added.
Shah had said in Parliament that delimitation was needed for “transparent reservation”.
According to Meghwal, the opposition would file a plea in court terming the reserved seats as illegal if the bill is implemented right away.
“If reservation is implemented before delimitation, they will file a PIL [public interest litigation] against it in the Supreme Court and the law will get stuck in court. We have taken all legal aspects into consideration,” he said.
When asked why the OBC quota was not considered, Meghwal replied that “these are constitutional issues due to which the UPA government could not cross the bridge”.
“I have asked why the UPA did not include OBCs in the bill [when they had introduced it]. We have empowered OBCs in a big way – the BJP gave a prime minister from the OBC community. There are also several OBC ministers in the Union government,” he said.
“They only want to give political colour to the bill. They also know the legal viewpoint. In India, there is only 15 percent women representation in the Lok Sabha but after this bill, it will be 33 percent – a big jump, more than that in many developed countries,” Meghwal claimed.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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