New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi has written to all state chief ministers from the Congress and alliance parties asking them to pass a resolution in support of the women’s reservation Bill. These resolutions, the Congress party president said, should be passed in the next assembly session.
“In order to reaffirm our support for the passage of the Bill, it would be expedient for the state assembly to pass a resolution calling for the reservation of one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies for women, in the next session,” Gandhi said in the letter.
“The lack of adequate representation of women in our polity undermines our democracy and perpetuates existing systemic injustices. Women in institutions of local self-governance have not only been effective leaders, but also challenged traditional gender roles that curtailed their participation in public life.”
The Congress chief pointed out that at present, India ranks 148 out of 193 countries in terms of the percentage of women in parliament. According to him, the situation is “even worse in state assemblies”.
The women’s reservation Bill seeks to reserve 33% of all seats in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies for women. It was introduced in parliament in 1996, but has not been passed in the last 22 years. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was in power with a majority for ten of those years, but did not pass the Bill.
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The Bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha in 2010, but lapsed after the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha in 2014.
The state assemblies of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh have already passed resolutions of the kind Gandhi is propagating.
As The Wire has reported before, the Bill’s journey began on September 12, 1996, when it was introduced in the Lok Sabha by the United Front government of H.D. Deve Gowda. As per the draft, the seats were to be reserved for women on a rotation basis and would be determined by draw of lots, in such a way that a seat would be reserved only once in three consecutive general elections. It said reservation of seats for women would cease to exist 15 years after the commencement of the amendment Act.
The Bill, however, failed to get the approval of the house then and was instead referred to a joint parliamentary committee. The committee submitted its report to the Lok Sabha two months later.
In 1998, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who headed the the first National Democratic Alliance government, reintroduced the Bill in the Lok Sabha. After Vajpayee’s law minister, M. Thambidurai introduced it in the house, a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP snatched it from the speaker and tore it into pieces.
Thereafter, the Bill lapsed and was reintroduced – in 1999, in 2002 and 2003. The Lok Sabha has not voted on the Bill till date.