Key women legislators’ meet to be held in March

A two- day national conference of women legislators is to be held here at a time when the demand for 33 per cent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies has been on the agenda of political parties.

Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, who has taken the initiative, plans to hold the conference in the national capital on March 5 and 6, ahead of International Women’s Day ( on March 8) and the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry.

CMs Jayalalithaa, Mamata Banerjee, Vasundhara Raje and Anandiben Patel will be invited besides Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and former CM Mayawati, parliamentary sources said. The theme of the conference is “Women Legislators: Building Resurgent India”. They said President Pranab Mukherjee will be invited to inaugurate the conference at Vigyan Bhavan while Prime Minister Narendra Modi would address the concluding session in the Central Hall of Parliament. Around 350 women legislators, women MPs, women ministers at the Centre and in states would be invited as well as women journalists, they said.

Ms Mahajan had spoken about the conference during her interaction with the media in Ahmedabad last month.

While the RS has passed the women’s reservation bill about six years ago, the LS could not take it up due to a sharp division on the issue of quota within quota.