New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to get the women’s reservation bill passed in the Lok Sabha given the BJP’s clear majority in the Lower House. The bill has already been passed by the Rajya Sabha in March 2010, when the UPA-2 government was in power.
The Congress president assured the Prime Minister of her party’s full support to the bill, which she said would be a significant step in empowering the nation’s women. “The Congress and its leader late Rajiv Gandhi first mooted the idea (in 1989) of women’s reservation in panchayats and nagar palikas in the Constitution Amendment Bill which the Opposition parties thwarted in the Rajya Sabha in 1989. But later in 1993 they were passed by both Houses,” she recalled.
In its reaction to Mrs Gandhi's letter, the BJP said she should have spoken to her allies who had blocked the passage of the bill earlier. “Rather than writing to the Prime Minister, Sonia Gandhi ought to have written or spoken to her alliance partners like Lalu Prasad Yadav (RJD) and Mulayam Singh Yadav (SP) to find why they had blocked the women's reservation bill when the UPA was in power,” said BJP spokesman G.V.L. Narasimha Rao.
Senior Congress leader Shobha Oza said that a Congress delegation will soon meet the President of India to press the demand for the government to bring in the women’s reservation bill at the earliest. The women’s reservation bill envisages 33 per cent reservations for women in Parliament and the state legislatures.
Party vice-president Rahul Gandhi later tweeted, “The Congress has and will continue to support the Women’s Reservation Bill.”
