Women’s Reservation Bill likely in winter session
The Narendra Modi government is mulling bringing the Women’s Reservation Bill in the winter session of Parliament.
The Bill provides for reserving a third of all seats for women in the Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies, including the seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The Bill has had a tortuous history. It was first introduced in 1996, and lapsed thrice with the dissolution of the respective Lok Sabhas. It was passed by the Rajya Sabha in 2010 during the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance-II government. Its passage in the Lok Sabha was resisted by allies of the Congress. But unlike the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha is a continuous House and the Bill is pending there. Sources said a final decision was yet to be taken but consultations were on and the leadership was keen to build on the Prime Minister’s ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ campaign and the positivity generated with the appointment of Nirmala Sitharaman as the Union defence minister.
The Bill is likely to see resistance from within the party since it could mean several of the sitting party members having to lose their seats, but during his years as the chief minister of Gujarat, Modi was known to replace at least a third of the party’s sitting legislators to beat anti-incumbency. The move would help the PM shape a women-centric narrative. Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a famous victory in 2014 on the back of a narrative that articulated the hopes and aspirations of the youth. For the 2019 polls, the Modi government believes that as part of its pro-poor focus, it should focus on schemes that help empower women.
The BJP’s election manifesto for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls had said the party “is committed to 33 per cent reservation in parliamentary and state assemblies through a constitutional amendment”.
The BJP’s win in the Uttar Pradesh (UP) Assembly polls has emboldened the top leadership to pursue a prowoman agenda.
The PM and BJP chief Amit Shah had publicly stated the contribution of the effective rollout of the Ujjwala scheme, which provided cooking gas cylinders to poor families, in the party’s electoral victory in UP.
Other pro-women measures, the party believes, have been opening of zero-balance accounts, cash transfers instead of ration and maternity benefits.
A BJP committee headed by party Vice-President Vinay Sahasrabuddhe has also studied various schemes, particularly women-centric schemes, in BJP-ruled states like Madhya Pradesh, and recommended other states should replicate it.