Women’s reservation Bill is incomplete without OBC quota, says Rahul Gandhi

“There are also two things that seem strange to me. One is the idea that [you] require a new census to implement this bill. And the second is that you require a new delimitation to implement this Bill. In my view it is quite simple. This Bill can be implemented today, by giving 33 per cent of the seats in the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabha to India’s women,’’ said the MP for Wayanad.

“Another issue that the government likes to distract everyone from is the caste census. For some reason, and I don’t quite understand what this reason is, the moment the Opposition raises the issue of a caste census, the BJP tries to create a new distraction, so that the OBC community, and the people of India, look the other way,’’ the Congress legislator said.

Gandhi pointed to the miniscule number of OBCs holding key positions in the country’s institutions, including the fact that only three of the 90 secretaries in the Government of India are from the community. “What is the most important set of people in the government of India? The people who define how this country is governed. Of course, there is the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha but beyond that, it is the 90 secretaries of the Government of India who are responsible for managing the core of the Government of India. And I asked myself the question, how many of the 90 people come from the OBC community. And I was shocked and shattered by the answer—only 3 of the 90 are from the OBC. These secretaries from the OBC community control only 5 per cent of the country’s budget—out of the Rs 44 lakh crore budget of the country, they control only Rs 2.47 lakh crore,’’ he said, adding that it was an insult to the OBC community that needed to be addressed immediately.

He also referred to Tuesday’s discussion in the new Parliament about the transfer of power that took place after India won freedom. He said the President of India, who is both a woman and a tribal, “should have been visible” in the transfer from the old Parliament to the new Parliament.

“I stand in support of the women’s reservation bill. Yesterday, I was listening to the discussion and the issue of the Sengol came up and there was a conversation about the Sengol—and also a little conversation about the transfer of power from the British to the people of India. Before handing over power to the people of India, the British asked the leadership of the freedom movement, whom are we going to transfer power to? The revolutionary answer that our freedom fighters gave is that we will transfer power to the people of India. We became a country that from its inception gave the vote to our women. And this was a revolutionary thing at the time. We also gave the vote to every single community. The vote was a mechanism of transfer of power. It was designed to further transfer of power to the people of India,’’ he said.

“A huge step forward in the transfer of power to the women of India was the Panchayati Raj, where women were given reservation and were allowed to enter the political system of India at scale. And this is another step. It’s a big step. I’m sure everybody in this room, the treasury benches and the Opposition, agrees that this is a very important step for the women of the country,” Gandhi added.