Women's Bill: Rajya Sabha adjourned as MPs protest
08/03/2010
Vice President Hamid Ansari on Monday introduced the Women's Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha but protest by SP MPs led to a quick adjournment. The debate on the bill is to begin soon.
The vote is the first step in making the 33% quota for women in Parliament and assemblies a reality. The battle in Lok Sabha remains, but the scales will tilt irretrievably. A "yes" vote means West Bengal and Tamil Nadu assemblies, where elections are due in 2011, could have no less than 98 and 78 women MLAs. The next LS will have at least 181 women, up from 59 in the present House.
In the final countdown, numbers are solidly stacked up for the Constitution (108th) amendment, better known as "Women's Bill". Congress managers are talking of 180 votes with 155 needed for a two-thirds majority. They see JD(U) chief and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar's sudden support for the Bill as having hit the OBC-led opposition squarely in the midriff.
The bill now enjoys overwhelming support of not just the ruling coalition but has the backing of both BJP and the Left as well as a number of smaller parties. Parties like TDP, DMK, AIADMK, SAD and National Conference lend critical mass. JD(U) has not issued a whip, but most of its MPs will support the bill.
With 33 crore registered women voters in India, a party can ill-afford to be "anti-women", in the centenary year of International Women's Day. In a House with 233 MPs at present, the match is looking one-sided. Till Congress chief Sonia Gandhi gave it a hard push, the situation seemed different. Ever since the H D Deve Gowda government first introduced it in September 1996, the Bill has been frozen with innumerable "formulae" failing to break the jinx.
In Rajya Sabha, Congress has 71 members, BJP 45, CPM 15, AIADMK 7, NCP 6, CPI 5, DMK 4, BJD 4, Telugu Desam, Trinamool Congress and AGP 2 each and Forward Bloc and RSP 1 each. These parties support the bill and account for 165. SAD has 3 MPs and at least five of JD(U)'s seven will back the bill. The Women's Reservation Bill has seen several twists and turns but usually ended in a blind alley. In case of Deve Gowda and then I K Gujral, the governments fell. In 1998, the same story repeated itself. In 1999, there were furious scenes in Lok Sabha with SP's S P Singh snatching the papers from the hands of then law minister Ram Jethmalani.
The Bill was introduced in RS in 2008. The panel, reconstituted in May 2009 under Congress MP Jayanthi Natarajan, submitted its report in Dec 2009. The Bill was cleared by the Union Cabinet on Feb 25 this year. The legislation has Sonia's backing with the Congress chief seeing it as part of her late husband Rajiv Gandhi's unfulfilled dream.
