New Delhi: The BJP’s gamble of calling a special session of Parliament to bring the women’s reservation bill — its eyes on the assembly elections lined up for the year-end — appears to have landed the party in a fix.
The demand raised by the Opposition for a “quota within quota” for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) has found resonance among several BJP leaders, including former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharti, an OBC leader herself.
The leaders include OBC MPs Sanghamitra Maurya (Lok Sabha, Badaun constituency), Sangeeta Yadav (Rajya Sabha, Uttar Pradesh), Kalpana Saini (Rajya Sabha, Uttarakhand) and Keshari Devi Patel (Lok Sabha, Phulpur).
The law, officially called the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, provides reservation for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, in line with constitutional provisions.
The Constitution doesn’t make any provision for OBC reservation in the Lok Sabha and stat.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah said in the Lok Sabha that “parliamentarians are currently elected in 3 categories — General, SC, ST… We [the government] have reserved one-third seats for women in each of them”.
Speaking to ThePrint, the aforementioned MPs said the Modi government is aware of the need to provide for an OBC quota under the women’s reservation law, adding that the community could not be overlooked.
The growing chorus has given the BJP pause, with party leaders telling ThePrint that they could not underestimate the potential impact of the Opposition’s campaign for reservation for OBC women.
Adding to their dilemma is the Opposition’s call to precede the reservation with a caste census.
The special session of Parliament was held from 18-23 September, months before assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Telangana.
While the BJP is looking to make a comeback in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, and build on recent gains in Telangana, it is up against an 18-year incumbency in Madhya Pradesh.
With the women’s reservation law, the BJP was eyeing outreach to women voters ahead of the elections.
The Congress, meanwhile, is seeking to capitalise on the OBC women’s quota issue to reclaim the OBC vote it has lost over the years to “Mandal parties”.
It has decided to hold more than a dozen press conferences to highlight the issue across India.
Questioned by the BJP on the Congress’ failure to add a quota for the OBCs in the UPA’s version of the women’s reservation bill, MP and former party chief Rahul Gandhi has said he regrets that it wasn’t done.
Also Read: Lok Sabha passes women’s reservation bill 454 to 2 — Amit Shah says ‘quota after 2029’
‘Govt must be considering ways to do it’
Earlier this week, ahead of PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Madhya Pradesh Monday, Uma Bharti said she “expected the PM to give a positive signal about carving out a quota for the OBCs within the women’s reservation law”.
She said the quota for OBC women should be included by amending the Constitution, and threatened to launch a campaign if they were not included in the ambit.
Meanwhile, Sanghamitra Maurya said that “OBC women can’t be left out”.
“Those women who belong to OBCs, they should be included in the law for their equitable representation,” she added. “The struggle of backward women is different from that of upper caste women.”
Sanghamitra is the daughter of five-time MLA Swami Prasad Maurya, who is now part of the Samajwadi Party, which is actively supporting the campaign for OBC women’s quota.
MP Sangeeta Yadav said “passing the women’s reservation bill is the first step in empowering women”.
“It was pending for 27 years. PM Modi has shown courage to pass it. The second step is reservation for OBC women. Of course, the prime minister, who included SC & ST women (in the law), might be thinking about a way to include the OBCs after the implementation of the quota.”
Kalpana Saini said “no party can risk annoying the OBC population”.
“But [quota for OBC women] can be done only through a constitutional amendment as it is a constitutional issue,” she added. “The bill was pending for a long time. The first priority was to take the first step. The government must be considering [the OBC quota] as the prime minister knows every aspect of this issue.”
Kesari Devi Patel noted that the OBCs “constitute a large constituency in society”.
“They can’t be devoid of reservation,” she said. “We have achieved the first step in empowering women. Now the next step is census and representation of OBC women in reservation,” she added. “The government is aware of this issue.”
Even Union minister Anupriya Patel of NDA ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) — whose party derives support from OBCs — said in the Lok Sabha that the “Opposition’s demand to have an OBC quota in the women’s reservation bill can’t be called wrong”.
The demand for OBC reservation within the proposed quota for women has been there since the first draft of the bill was moved in Parliament in 1996.
At the time, the Joint Parliamentary Committee under Geeta Mukherjee that examined the bill had suggested adding the sub-quota once the necessary constitutional provision was made.
Why BJP is worried
The BJP has been fairly successful in assimilating the backward classes under the Hindutva fold by empowering non-dominant-caste OBCs through representation in the organisation and power-sharing structure over the past two decades.
Answering the Opposition during the special session, BJP president J.P. Nadda questioned the absence of an OBC quota in the UPA bill, with the BJP also noting that it had made an OBC prime minister, and several of its ministers and MPs were from the community.
However, there is worry in the BJP about the potential impact of the Opposition’s campaign, and the matter was touched upon by PM Modi in his speech at Bhopal Monday.
Addressing a rally, Modi sought to warn voters that the Opposition “would try to divide ‘nari shakti (woman power)”. “I want to tell you,” he said. “They will play a new game for sure, they don’t want women to unite.”
Talking about the party’s dilemma, BJP OBC MP Dhal Singh Bisen of Madhya Pradesh said OBC reservation was not possible “without doing a census”.
“Otherwise, political parties will make a hue and cry that sufficient reservation was not made,” he added, saying that the Congress may nevertheless “mislead OBC voters in poll campaigns by building a narrative around denial of OBC reservation to women”.
A BJP MP from Rajasthan, also an OBC, told ThePrint that the party was “using the passage of the women’s bill for consolidation of women voters ahead of the assembly elections”.
“We have got success in bridging differences of backward castes through the Hindutva project, but the Congress campaign on caste census and women’s bill is a gameplan to dent the BJP’s strong social penetration among OBCs and obc women,” he said. “That is the main worry in OBC-dominated constituencies — it can be counter-productive to first not allow the caste census and, second, to leave OBC women out of the quota.”
The leader said “even male OBC voters can be influenced by this narrative”.
“It’s true, our organisational setup, communication channel and prime minister’s voice is much stronger than that of the Opposition, but underestimating the Opposition’s strength can be counterproductive.”
A BJP functionary said that “caste census is a Pandora’s box that the Opposition is pushing to create grounds for political reservation for OBC”.
“If women are included, then men will also start making a demand for reservation. The Constitution mandates gender-equal quota. It will create another round of fissures in society, so it was not touched.”
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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