New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday picked holes in the Women’s Reservation Bill and said that women should not be made to wait long for 33 percent reservation in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies. According to Congress leaders, there were two sticking points in the bill introduced by the government in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
First, the quota was linked to the census and a delimitation of parliamentary constituencies for which no date had been specified. The party leaders pointed out that the government had missed the 2021 census which was due as per schedule after the last census was conducted in 2011. Further, the conduct of a fresh census across the country, tabulation of its data properly and then publishing of the report were time-taking exercises and would take around two years to complete.
Also, for the delimitation exercise, the government would first have to announce an expert panel which would submit a report using the census data. This would again consume several years. In this light, the actual quotas could not be implemented before the 2029 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress feared. AICC general secretary in charge of organization KC Venugopal while talking to ETV Bharat over the bill said that the government must address the two key points made by former party chief Sonia Gandhi during her speech.
“The first is not to make census and delimitation a pre-condition for the 33 percent quota and the second is to provide reservation to SC, ST, OBC women within the 33 percent quota to ensure social justice,” he said. AICC functionary Gurdeep Sappal noted that a 33 percent quota for women was set to miss the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and expressed the doubt that the delay may well extend to the 2039 Lok Sabha polls.
Also read: Sonia Gandhi backs Women's Reservation Bill but questions delay
“The speech of BJP MP Nishikant Dubey has confirmed our worst fears. The women’s reservation will shift beyond the 2034 Lok Sabha polls. If Lok Sabha elections happen as per normal schedule, women’s quota will come in 2039. Dubey has linked the delimitation for women’s reservation to Article 81(3) and 82 of the Constitution.
As per the Articles, the delimitation will happen after the 2031 census. It will take over two years to publish the final report of the 2031 census. Then the delimitation commission will be formed which will take another few years to submit a report. By then, the 2034 Lok Sabha polls would be over. The last delimitation commission was set up in 2002 and gave its report in 2007,” said Sappal.
He said that the BJP’s argument that the Supreme Court would strike down if delimitation is done before the 2031 census was “wrong and misleading”. “The freeze on delimitation till the census after 2026 is done was introduced through the 84th Constitutional amendment in 2001. The constitutional freeze is only on population-based delimitation, not on any other delimitation.
The government must remove this clause and introduce a women's reservation bill for 2024 and not shift it to 2035-2039,” he said. CWC member Praniti Shinde too questioned the BJP’s “so-called big move” and said the PM’s projection as champion of women’s empowerment was a gimmick. “The Prime Minister’s projection of himself as a champion of women empowerment is a gimmick.
Even after the women’s reservation bill is passed by the Parliament, the proposed 33 percent reservation for women will not be implemented in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. As per the bill, such reservation will be given only after the next census is over and a delimitation exercise has been completed. Both these steps will take a long time. If the quotas had to come so late, what was the need for a special Parliament session,” Shinde told ETV Bharat.
