THE JS DESK
New Delhi, Sept. 19: The Narendra Modi government Tuesday introduced the 128th Constitutional Amendment Bill, 2023, to bring in 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and all state Legislative Assemblies, reports The Indian Express.
This will include reserving one-third of the seats kept for SC/STs, and “as nearly as possible”, one-third of the total seats in the general category.
The seats will be reserved after the completion of the delimitation exercise based on the first Census conducted after the passage of the Bill. It mandates women’s reservation for 15 years from the commencement of the Act, with Parliament empowered to extend it further.
Rotation of seats reserved for women will happen only after each subsequent delimitation exercise, to be determined by Parliament by law, as per the Bill.
Introducing the Bill, which will be taken up by the House on Wednesday, Union Minister of Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal said that once passed, it will take the number of women MPs in the Lok Sabha, as per its present strength of 543, to 181. The current House has 82 women MPs.
The Bill, which seeks to insert clause (1) in Article 330 A to reserve seats for women, says by another clause that one-third of the seats reserved for SCs and STs in the Lok Sabha be reserved for women from these categories, and a third clause on keeping aside, as nearly as possible, one-third of the total seats filled by direct election to the Lok Sabha for women.
Extending the same principle, the Bill seeks to amend Article 332 A to mandate women’s reservation in Legislative Assemblies, plus other amendments in the Article to keep one-third of SC/ST seats for women in the category, and, 33% of all seats – as nearly as possible – filled by direct election for women.
The Bill seeks to insert in Clause 2 of Article 239 AA, after sub-clause (b), the following clauses: “(ba) Seats shall be reserved for women in the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi”, and (bb), which says that one-third of the seats reserved for SCs and STs in the Delhi Assembly shall be reserved for women.
Just before the introduction of the Bill, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the government was introducing the Constitutional Amendment Bill to increase the representation of women in legislatures, naming it ‘Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (literally, Act to worship women’s power). Congratulating all “mothers, sisters and daughters”, Modi urged members to get the amendment Bill passed unanimously.
Speaking after the PM, Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said it was the Rajiv Gandhi government that had in 1989 provided 33% reservation for women in local bodies. He said that subsequent Congress governments had tried to get the women’s reservation Bill passed, but it had “passed in either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha” but failed to get passed in the other House.
Objecting to his statement, Home Minister Amit Shah said that the Bill had never been passed in the Lok Sabha. He added that it had been passed in the Rajya Sabha under the UPA government, but lapsed in 2014 as it could not be passed in the Lok Sabha. Shah asked Speaker Om Birla to either expunge Chowdhury’s statement or ask him to show factual proof of his claim.
Later, Meghwal sought to run the House through the history of the Bill. He said that it was first introduced in September 1996 by the H D Deve Gowda government, and then in December 1998 and December 1999 by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. He added that the Manmohan Singh government introduced it in the Rajya Sabha in 2008, from where it was sent to the department-related Standing Committee. It was then passed by the Rajya Sabha and sent to the Lok Sabha.
