Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader K.K. Kavita has raised the temperature of politics by going on a one-day hunger strike in Delhi regarding the issue of women’s reservation, which has been hanging for the last 27 years, has once again under the spot light.
She is the daughter of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and herself a well-established politician, so she left no stone unturned to come to Delhi from Telangana to gather political power.
Leaders of 12 parties participated in her dharna, but the big thing is that the leaders of RJD, SP and JDU, who have been opposing this bill since the beginning, have surprised everyone by joining it.
It is clear from her stand that now she has come in support of this bill. In this way, the entire opposition has now thrown the ball in the court of Modi government, so the question is whether the government will pass this bill in Parliament before the next Lok Sabha elections.
Will it be able to muster up the courage to get it passed in both the Houses? Speaking in political terms, just before the 2024 elections, the opposition has tried to implement the strategy of making this issue a bone of contention for the government.
By the way, women’s reservation is such a delicate issue, on which consensus could never be reached and once this bill was passed by Rajya Sabha, it could not be passed by Lok Sabha.
The Women’s Reservation Bill was first introduced in the Parliament in 1996 by the then HD Deve Gowda government, but due to various reasons it was so fiercely opposed that it did not work.
By the way, the demand for giving reservation to women in the legislature is not new. For the purpose of implementing it, in the years 1992 and 1993, by amending the 72nd and 73rd Constitution, it was arranged that one-third of the seats in the Parliament and Legislative Assemblies would be reserved for women and also on the post of Chairperson in Gram Panchayat and urban bodies.
Only women will have rights. It is a matter of surprise that every party has been talking about women’s rights and giving more representation to them, but they have not been able to make a political consensus on this bill till date.
Kavita says that if India wants to be at par with other developed countries then country will also have to give more representation to women in politics.
The entire opposition has united in its support and the Modi government has a chance to create history by passing this bill.
If we compare the participation of women in the Parliament of other countries of the world with that of India, then our Lok Sabha currently has only 14% women MPs i.e. total 78.
Whereas in Rajya Sabha this figure is even less and there are only about 11 percent women members.
Although it has increased a lot in comparison to the first Lok Sabha because then only 5 percent were women members, but still India is far behind compared to other countries.
For example, 61 percent in Rwanda, 43 percent in South Africa, 21 percent of women in Bangladesh have participation in parliament.
According to the latest report of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, India ranks 144 out of 193 countries regarding the representation of women in Parliament.
According to a study by the American Economic Association, it is easier to enact and implement gender-sensitive laws in countries where there is more representation of women in their parliaments.
By the way, some opposition parties have been vocal opponents of the Women’s Reservation Bill since its inception. In 1996, when this bill could not be passed by the Lok Sabha, it was sent to the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) headed by Geeta Mukherjee, which passed the bill in December the same year.
But the Lok Sabha was dissolved soon after that and the bill lapsed. After that the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee introduced it in the Lok Sabha in 1998 and 1999 but no consensus was reached. In the year 2003, the government Twice again tried to build a political consensus but that too proved futile.
The UPA government that came in the year 2004 had kept it in its Common Minimum Programme.
Therefore, the bill was saved from lapsing by presenting it in Rajya Sabha. In the year 2008, 5 out of 7 recommendations of Mukherjee’s committee were also included in it.
After that, on March 9, 2010, Rajya Sabha passed this bill with full majority and a new History was created. Then 186 votes were cast in favor of the bill while only one vote was cast against it.
From there it was sent to the Lok Sabha, where it remained on ventilator for the next four years and finally in 2014 it too died as soon as the Lok Sabha was dissolved.
