‘Forget 2024, this may not even be possible in 2029’: Mahua Moitra calls women’s quota Bill a sham

“What this government has brought here is not a Women’s Reservation Bill, it is a Women’s Reservation Rescheduling Bill. Its agenda is delay, its agenda is not reservation. The constant dithering on when there will be next Census and when there will be delimitation will mean that the reservation is indefinitely delayed. This is not a historic Bill as it is being touted. It is a sham. The question of women’s reservation requires action, not the legislatively mandated procrastination,” Moitra said while participating in the debate on the Nari Shakti Vandan Bill.

The Bill proposes to reserve 33 per cent of seats for women in Lok Sabha and state Assemblies but says that it will come into effect only after the delimitation exercise based on the next Census. This eventually pushes the Bill’s implementation to 2029 or beyond.

Supporting the Bill, Moitra said that the original idea came from Mamata Banerjee. “We do not need to go on record to say that we support the Bill. We already send 37 per cent of MPs as women. It is you who have to go on record to show your support. You have to show that you can send 33 per cent women to Lok Sabha,” she said.

Taking a dig at the BJP, Moitra said, “When this government wanted to protect cows… I support the move… you did not wait to count the number of cows. You did not wait to see whether the cow was a jersey or a Gir or Sahiwal. You just went and built the cow shelters. Are we women any less that we have to wait? We don’t need any more vandans, what we need is direct action. Mr PM, this is your moment to show that ‘Modi hai to mumkin hai’ (If Modi is there, it is possible). Implement the reservation immediately. Based on today’s voter list, send 33 per cent women to Parliament.”

“To the government I say this, ‘Give us this day our equal rights, we hold up the sky, give us at least a third of our earth’,” she added.

Moitra emphasised that the government was seeking false credit as the Bill had been drafted in a manner that it may not become a reality even in 2029.

“It means, in true BJP doublespeak style, we do not know if, and actually when, we will have 33 per cent women sitting in the Lok Sabha. The date of the next Census is entirely indeterminate. Therefore, the date of the delimitation is doubly indeterminate. As [DMK MP] Kanimozhi said, according to the data, we will have 0 per cent increase of seats for Kerala, only 26 per cent for Tamil Nadu, but a whopping 79 per cent for both MP and UP. So, women’s reservation is dependent upon two totally indeterminate dates. Can there be a greater jumla [empty promise]? Forget 2024, this may not even be possible in 2029,” Moitra said.

The TMC MP lamented that when TMC was sending 37 per cent of its MPs as women to Lok Sabha, the House had only 15 per cent women. She also raised the issue of underrepresentation of women from the minority community.

“Within women Parliamentarians, Muslims and Dalits have been consistently under-represented. From 1952 to 2004, only eight Muslim women were elected to Parliament, many of whom served multiple terms. In today’s Lok Sabha, there are only two Muslim women members and both are from West Bengal and the TMC. The numbers for male and female turnout in the last general elections were nearly the same. But women’s candidature remained an abysmal 9 per cent, up from only 7 per cent in 2004,” Moitra said.

Recounting that India’s founders had no qualms about giving equal rights to women, Moitra said that the Constituent Assembly had 15 female members. She also recalled that these women had rejected the idea of women’s reservation.

“All 15 women who were part of the Constituent Assembly rejected the demand for any special women’s reservation on July 18, 1947. Member activist Renuka Roy noted that Vijaylakshmi Pandit has not been selected because she is a woman, nor was sex made a bar to the appointment. It was her proven work that has been responsible for her appointment. The demand for a special reservation is an insult to our intelligence and capacity. So sure were our founding mothers that this great land would not deny its women their rightful place based on merit. But alas, it has taken 75 years. And today it is both my pride and my shame that I stand here in India’s Parliament speaking on the women’s reservation Bill,” she said.