PM Modi’s government has ushered in a new era for women in politics in the new Parliament House on Ganesh Chaturthi on Tuesday (September 19, 2023). The PM presented the draft of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the name of ‘Nari Shakti Vandan Act’. With this, the picture of 33 percent reservation given to women in the state assemblies including the Parliament of the country became clearer. The government introduced the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha.
Women’s reservation will be implemented after fresh delimitation of existing Lok Sabha seats. Out of the seats which are reserved for SC-ST, one third of the seats will be reserved for SC-ST women.
According to the draft of the Women’s Reservation Bill, 2023, this bill will come into effect after the delimitation of the existing seats. In this, one-third seats will be reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. There is a provision in the bill that the seats reserved for SC-ST will also come under the purview of women’s reservation.
According to media reports, the Modi cabinet had approved the Women’s Reservation Bill (WRB) in the Union Cabinet meeting held on Monday (September 18, 2023). This bill was hanging in limbo for the last 27 years. This decision was not made public, but Union Minister Prahlad Singh Patel had posted about it on his X handle (earlier Twitter). Later he deleted this post.
The draft of the Women’s Reservation Bill,2023.
The Bill shall come into effect after delimitation of existing seats.
One third of the seats shall be reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The total number of seats in a legislative house (including reserved… pic.twitter.com/ocI9wVnwmK
— NewsTAP (@newstapTweets) September 19, 2023
However, now this bill has been introduced in the Parliament. Discussion on this is ongoing. The indication is clear that this special session of 5 days which started in the old building of Parliament and in the new building is going to be special for women. After all, what is this Women’s Reservation Bill and why has it not been passed in the Parliament of the country yet, here we are going to tell you every little thing about it.
Why is Women’s Reservation Bill necessary?
Minister of State for Food Processing Industries and Jal Shakti Prahlad Patel had posted on ‘ Congratulations to Narendra Modi ji and congratulations to the Modi government.” Later he deleted this post. Now the Prime Minister himself announced it in Parliament, after which it was tabled.
However, this is not the first time that a Women’s Reservation Bill is being introduced in Parliament. Even before this, this bill has been introduced in the Parliament of the country, but due to lack of consensus among the political parties, it was postponed every time. In his last speech in the old Parliament House, PM Modi had also indicated that there is a lack of participation of women in the Parliament and Legislative Assemblies of the country.
The draft of the Women’s Reservation Bill,2023.
The Bill shall come into effect after delimitation of existing seats.
One third of the seats shall be reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The total number of seats in a legislative house (including reserved… pic.twitter.com/ocI9wVnwmK
— NewsTAP (@newstapTweets) September 19, 2023
He had said that since independence, more than 7500 public representatives have worked in both the houses. The number of women representatives among these has been around 600. From this it can be understood that there is a need to increase the participation of women in Parliament and Assemblies.
In the current Lok Sabha, 82 women members were elected out of 539 MPs, which is just 15.21 per cent of the total number. According to the data shared by the government with the Parliament in December 2022, there are 31 women MPs out of 238 MPs in the Rajya Sabha, which is 13.02 percent of the total MPs. According to the global average, we are far behind in women’s participation in Parliament. According to a study by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the global average is 26 percent.
Data shows that their representation in many state assemblies is less than 15 percent. Women’s representation in many state assemblies, including Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Odisha, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura and Puducherry, is less than 10 per cent. is less. In Mizoram and Nagaland the percentage of women in the assembly is zero.
According to government data for December 2022, Bihar, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi had 10-12 percent women MLAs. Among the five states with the highest representation of women MLAs, Chhattisgarh has 14.44 percent, West Bengal has 13.7, Jharkhand has 12.35, Rajasthan has 12 and UP has 11.66 percent women MLAs.
Where Jammu and Kashmir is 2.30, Karnataka is 3.14 and Puducherry is 3.33 percent. At the same time, their participation in the assembly of Delhi and Uttarakhand is only 11.43 percent. Over the past few weeks, several parties, including BJD and BRS, have sought to revive the bill. Congress also passed a resolution regarding this in its Hyderabad Congress Working Committee meeting on Sunday (September 17).
One special thing about this bill is that parties like RJD, SP, JMM are opposing it by demanding reservation for SC, ST and OBC even within women’s reservation. But along with BJP, Congress, BJD, BRS, YSRCP are in support of this bill.
SP has 4 MPs in the Lok Sabha and RJD has not a single MP opposing this bill, hence there are full chances of this bill being passed. It is worth noting that efforts were made to implement this bill five times, but every time the parties got divided on the question of participation of deprived women and this law could not be made.
What is the history of this bill?
During the tenure of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, a report named ‘Towards Equality’ came out. In this, details of the condition of women in every field were given. Along with this, the issue of reservation was also mentioned. However, most of the members of the committee that prepared this report were against reservation.
Women also wanted to enter politics on their own, but in the coming years, women realized that their path to politics was not easy. Since then, the need for reservation was felt to provide representation to women in Parliament. In the 1980s, the country’s late PM Rajiv Gandhi’s attempt to pass a bill to provide one-third reservation for women in Panchayat and local body elections was opposed by the assemblies of many states. He said that this would reduce his powers.
The Women’s Reservation Bill was first introduced on September 12, 1996 by the United Front government of PM HD Deve Gowda. At that time Congress was supporting this alliance from outside. At that time, Mulayam Singh Yadav of Samajwadi Party and Lalu Prasad Yadav of Rashtriya Janata Dal had strongly opposed it.
Then this bill was introduced as the 81st Constitutional Amendment Bill. In this, within the proposal of 33 percent reservation for women in Parliament and State Assemblies, there was a provision for sub-reservation for Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), but there was no provision for reservation for Other Backward Classes.
It is proposed in this bill that the reserved seats should be rotated after every election of the Lok Sabha. Reserved seats may be allotted by rotation to different constituencies in a state or union territory. Reservation of seats for women will end after 15 years of implementation of this Amendment Act. After this, another attempt was made to introduce this bill in 1997. Then Sharad Yadav of Janata Dal (United) had criticized this bill and made an objectionable comment that this bill would benefit only ‘underprivileged women’. She had said that how would ‘dark urban women’ represent our rural women.
After this, in the 12th Lok Sabha in 1998, M Thambidurai, the then Law Minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s NDA government, tried to introduce this bill, but again it was not successful.
When the then Union Law Minister M Thambidurai was going to introduce the bill, RJD member Surendra Prakash Yadav snatched it from the minister’s hand. Along with colleague Ajit Kumar Mehta, he reached the Speaker’s desk in an attempt to destroy them and collect more copies of it.
The Vajpayee government again tried to introduce this bill in the 13th Lok Sabha in 1999. Even during that time, political parties were divided over this demand. After this, he also tried to pass this bill in 2002 and 2003-2004, but could not succeed.
The Vajpayee government brought this bill in Parliament at least six times, but every time the Congress and its allies postponed the bill. Remember, the Vajpayee government did not have the majority required to pass it and was dependent on the opposition for consensus.
Then 108th constitutional amendment took place for the bill
Manmohan Singh took over as Prime Minister when the Congress-led UPA government came to power in 2004. Then in 2008, this bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha as the 108th Constitutional Amendment Bill. In the year 2008, this bill was sent to the Standing Committee on Law and Justice.
Two members of the committee, Virendra Bhatia and Shailendra Kumar, were from the Samajwadi Party. He said that he is not against it, but he does not accept the draft of the bill. He had advised that every political party should reserve 20 percent of its tickets for women and that women’s reservation in Parliament should not exceed 20 percent.
When women’s reservation bill was passed in Rajya Sabha
Under the UPA government, on March 9, 2010, the Women’s Reservation Bill was finally passed by the Rajya Sabha with an overwhelming majority of 186 votes to one. Marshals had to be used on the day this bill was passed. Even then BJP, Left parties and JDU had supported it. Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal had strongly opposed it.
Rajya Sabha Speaker had suspended seven MPs of Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal who created ruckus. Both these parties were UPA’s allies in the government. Congress did not introduce this bill in the Lok Sabha due to the danger of the government falling.
In fact, under Article 107 (5) of the Constitution, the bills which remain under consideration in the Lok Sabha, lapse as soon as it is dissolved. For this reason, after the dissolution of the Lok Sabha in 2014, this Women’s Reservation Bill automatically lapsed. However, Rajya Sabha being a permanent house, this bill is still in existence. Therefore, it will be presented afresh in the Lok Sabha.
The BJP-led Modi government, which came to power in 2014, talked about introducing it in its second term. The party had promised 33 percent women’s reservation in its 2014 and 2019 election manifestos. Congress Parliamentary Party leader Sonia Gandhi had expressed her support by writing a letter to the PM in 2017.
After becoming Congress President, Rahul Gandhi also wrote a letter to the PM on July 16, 2018, reiterating his support for the party. Regarding the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, Rahul Gandhi had also said that if his party comes to power, he will pass the Women’s Reservation Bill on priority basis.
However, the Congress’s game plan with this bill has always been to pay lip service to the agenda of women’s representation, while in practice it has been sabotaging it through its coalition partners and indeed its own MPs.
The Congress, which had the required majority in 2010, could pass this bill through the Rajya Sabha only because of the support of the BJP, but here again it proved to be a sham. Sonia Gandhi had admitted that her own party opposed it.
This bill has been introduced during the five-day special session of the year 2023. If it is passed, then it will become a law after getting approval from the President. As soon as this law is made, it will become easier for every third member of the Lok Sabha to be a woman in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
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