Still no consensus on Women’s Bill

The all-party meeting called by Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi this morning failed again to arrive at a consensus on the Women’s Reser...

The all-party meeting called by Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi this morning failed again to arrive at a consensus on the Women’s Reservation Bill in its current form. But the meeting threw up a lot of proposals on the issue and will be discussed in further detail in the coming weeks.

To follow up the meeting, Joshi is likely to hold talks with leaders of major parties and with the PM and Leader of Opposition to arrive at a consensus before the Monsoon Session of Parliament. Barring CPI(M) which insists on sticking to the Bill as it is, other parties, including BJP and Congress, appeared willing to explore other options. Most parties also favour a rotation system, under which a third of the seats reserved for women would be rotated every five years.

The main proposals are: 1) to make it mandatory for political parties to give tickets to women for a third of seats contested by them; 2) declare one-third of all Lok Sabha seats (180 seats) double-member constituencies which will elect a man and a woman each and increase the Lok Sabha’s strength from 542 to 722; 3) reduce the quota from the proposed 33 pc to 15 pc; 4) if the first option is adopted and say, only 10 pc women get elected, the balance will be filled through nominations based on the proportionate strength of different parties in the Legislature.

Parties like Shiv Sena, Samata Party, Samajwadi Party, RJD etc which are opposed to the Bill in its present form are likely to agree to these proposals. SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav reportedly said that his party would agree to a quota of 15 pc, while the Shiv Sena said it would be best to leave it to parties to allot one third tickets to women rather than reserve one third seats. The Muslim League sought to extend the scope of the discussion by demanding a comprehensive law for reservation for minorities — not just women among the minorities.

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