Chennai: Leader of Opposition M.K. Stalin on Friday sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention to get the women reservation bill passed to facilitate the long pending representation for women in country’s prestigious legislatures.
He said it would afford them equal opportunity to avail the fruits of social justice and gender justice, which are considered as an indispensable instrument for women’s political empowerment.
Stalin said the bill moved to empower women’s voice in the legislatures and Parliament is struggling to succeed. United Nations is celebrating International Women Day-2017 with a noble theme of “Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030” and striving very hard to achieve economic, social and gender justice for the womenfolks internationally, he noted.
Listing the contribution of the DMK for women’s progress, he said the Hindu Succession (Tamil Nadu Amendment) Act 1989 granting equal rights to women in inheritance of property, 33 per cent reservation for women in the local bodies, 30 per cent reservation for women in government jobs and women self help groups for economic independence were some of the salient welfare and empowerment measures legislated and implemented during the DMK regime in the state.
The history of the women reservation bill could be traced to the year 1996. Despite various attempts during the past 20 years, the women reservation bill has failed to see the light of the day. As an ardent champion of women empowerment and social equality, the former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had made two great efforts, one on June 26,1998 and another on November 22, 1999, to get the women reservation bill passed, but the efforts did not materialise fruitfully-due to one reason or the other, Stalin said.
