Women from all parties must seek passage of reservation bill

The Rajya Sabha passed the bill in 2010, and the event made Sushma Swaraj and Sonia Gandhi embrace emotionally.

Rahul Gandhi, in his latest interview, has emphasised that women’s representation in Parliament should be prioritised. Similar determination has echoed by the BJP. But the reality on this subject belies the promises made by both parties.

This brings to mind the embrace between Sonia Gandhi and Sushma Swaraj in March 2010 in the precincts of Parliament, which has to be seen in the context of Sushma Swaraj’s earlier statement that “I will shave my head if a foreigner Sonia Gandhi becomes Prime Minister.” Luckily, Sonia Gandhi saved Swaraj that embarrassment by making Manmohan Singh the Prime Minister in 2004. So what happened in the interim for such close bonhomie between the two?

Though introduced by H.D. Deve Gowda for the first time on 12 September 1996 in the Lok Sabha, no action was taken by various governments to effectuate the legislation on Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament and the state legislatures. Everyone expected the legislation to be passed immediately. In fact, Prime Minister I.K. Gujral promised his earliest priority in passing this Bill, but nothing really happened.

When the UPA government came to power in 2004, it announced that this would be its first priority. But instead, there was total silence on the Bill in the President’s speech on the opening day of the Parliamentary session. This was an open and clear notice to the women activists that the Bill, which had been so proudly projected as a commitment to gender equality, had been quietly buried, and was not likely to be revived in conceivable future.

But then circumstances of steep price rise, political compulsions of elections in Karnataka and other impending elections made the then gov- ernment wiser and it decided to refer the Bill to the Parliamentary Standing Committee. Though the innocent amongst the women groups were hoping that the Bill would become an Act of Legislature, nothing happened until 2010.

The Women’s Reservation Bill, or The Constitution (108th Amendment) Bill, 2008, is a lapsed Bill in Parliament of India, which proposed to amend the Constitution of India to reserve 33% of all seats in the Lower House of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, and in all state Legislative Assemblies for women.

The Rajya Sabha passed the bill on 9 March 2010. It was this event that made Sushma Swaraj and Sonia Gandhi embrace emotionally. However, the Lok Sabha never voted on the Bill. The Bill lapsed after the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha in 2014.

Every time from 1998 to 2014, whenever Parliament met, women representatives were assured in all solemnity by the major political parties that they hoped to pass the Bill in that very session. In reality, this was a tongue-incheek operation. That is why one feels that women should support the alternative of double-member constituencies which will meet both the requirement of ensuring onethird quota for women and, at the same time, will not disturb the present seats. Thus, the Lok Sabha membership can be easily increased to 750, with a provision that one woman candidate will mandatorily be elected from those doublemember constituencies, and, depending upon the votes received, it may be that even both elected candidates could be women. This law was laid down by the Supreme Court decades ago in former President V.V. Giri’s case. The same principle will apply in the case of elections to the state legislatures.

Shivraj Patil, once Union Home Minister, is on record admitting that space is not a problem if Parliament decides to increase the number of seats.

The alternative of double member constituencies can be done by amending Article 81(2) of the Constitution by increasing the present strength, which can be easily done if political parties are genuine in their commitment to the Bill.

I know the Delimitation Commission has already marked the constituencies on the basis of single member seats. But I do not think it is necessary to redraw the constituencies to make it double.

By a rule of thumb, the top one third of the constituencies having the maximum voters in each state could be declared double-member. If the legislators are sincerely genuine, they could even submit an agreed list.

At present, of course, a fresh process has again to be initiated in Parliament, because the previous Reservation Bill lapsed with the dissolution of the previous Lok Sabha in 2014.

In the elections in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat parties did not include the item of reservation for women in their election manifestoes. Can such male chauvinism be allowed to exist in our country?

With the 2019 Parliamentary elections coming, it is time for the women leadership in both BJP and Congress to warn all parties that they will no longer tolerate injustice and neglect. Let them give a rallying cry against the male chauvinists, like the one given by Spanish freedom fighters in the 1936 Civil War—“no pasaran, you shall not pass”, otherwise the joint fight will continue. They should request Mamata Banerjee and Mayawati to join hands with them.

Let me recall that Dr Ram Manohar Lohia had opined that reservation for women was an instrument of social engineering—he could never have suggested splitting the strength of women’s quota by further splitting them in sub quotas. Time is short. Only an effort by women will see through the Women’s Reservation Bill. The Election Commission of India is an autonomous constitutional authority accountable for administering election processes in the country. However, the Commission finds itself at the receiving end of allegations by the Congress, which has termed it as a “captive puppet” of the Bharatiya Janata Party and accused it of acting in a partisan manner in favour of the ruling dispensation.

The insinuation is that since the Chief Election Commissioner, A.K. Joti, had worked as principal secretary to Narendra Modi when he was Gujarat Chief Minister and was also the Chief Secretary of the state, he was reluctant to take cognisance of the Congress complaint. The Congress has claimed that the Prime Minister had breached the model code of conduct after casting his vote on Thursday by holding a road show.

In sharp contrast, the Commission had registered an FIR against TV channels that had aired Rahul Gandhi’s interview after the campaigning was over, while no action had been initiated against those who showed Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and BJP president Amit Shah for making charges against the Congress in interactions with different television stations so as to propagate their views. The BJP, has reacted by calling the Congress “bad losers”, who were unable to face defeat both in Himachal and Gujarat.

The trading of charges between the two principal parties on the issue of neutrality of the Election Commission could set in motion a dangerous trend where those appointed to the august body would have to constantly face the neutrality test. The present Election Commission, besides A.K. Joti, has two other members—O.P.Rawat and Sunil Arora. All the three belong to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and have outstanding track records. However, during the course of their career, the trio happened to serve powerful politicians belonging to the ruling party. Thus, their professional rivals and Congress politicians have branded them as pro-BJP bureaucrats, a matter which definitely does not take into account the meritorious service rendered by them to their respective states and the country. It was perhaps, a coincidence that Rawat was the principal secretary to two Madhya Pradesh Chief Ministers, Uma Bharti and Babulal, and concurrently enjoyed a comfortable rapport with BJP politicians and RSS functionaries. Similarly, Sunil Arora, who carved a name for himself while heading the Indian Airlines, was the principal secretary to the late Rajasthan Chief Minister, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. In bureaucratic and political circles, the post-retirement assignments are being viewed as a pay-off for their contribution to their political patrons.

However, this is not the first time that a controversy over the appointment of the Election Commissioners has arisen. In 2005, shortly after the Congress led UPA came to power, Navin Chawla, former Information and Broadcasting Secretary was appointed to the Commission as a member. At the time, the BJP was quick to protest, as Chawla was considered close to the Gandhis, and therefore demanded his removal. Petitions were made to the President of India, but Chawla survived and subsequently won accolades for successfully conducting the polls in Jammu and Kashmir, as in other places including the 2009 Parliamentary elections. Similarly, his predecessor N. Gopalaswami was an appointee of the NDA government and is believed to have been on L.K. Advani’s staff when he was the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting during the Morarji Desai government.

The short point is that since the elections are conducted by the Commission, it is paramount that it should not only act fairly but appear to be equally judicious and above board. When political parties begin questioning the credibility of the referees, it is not only unfortunate, but can be likened to uprooting the foundation of our democracy. In this context, political parties must comprehend that in his famous story “Panch Permeshwar”, noted Hindi writer Munshi Premchand drove home the point that once a person occupies a position of judicial responsibility his or her world view automatically is altered and one acts instinctively in a neutral manner.

If Joti and his colleagues are under siege by the Congress, it perhaps is because certain events preceding the ongoing Assembly polls did not sit well with the political class. Their judgement of delaying the notification for the Gujarat polls, while declaring the schedule for the Himachal elections was questioned by the BJP’s adversaries, who stated that this had been done to give more time to the saffron brigade to prepare themselves before the model code of conduct came into effect. This underlying suspicion would have been outright dismissed had the three gentlemen not been associated with powerful politicians in their respective states. Thus, from day one itself, the Election Commission needlessly allowed itself to be put under close scrutiny.

It is obvious that the acrimony over the conduct of the Election Commission may not end with the announcement of the results, but dissatisfied parties could possibly move court to seek justice. The bottom line is that Parliament and the Apex Court must protect this sacred institution and lay down certain norms that should be observed in the appointment of the members of the Commission. The EC, like Caesar’s wife, should be above suspicion. It is one institution that people still repose their faith in and by no means should its credibility be eroded. At the same time, the three Election Commissioners must be respected and their decisions should be accepted by one and all. Between us.