AICC spokesperson Mahima Singh on Monday said though the Women Reservation Bill has been passed by both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, it cannot be implemented till the next census is completed and this is typical of the BJP's agenda of "wait for your rights but vote for us now". ''Why has Prime Minister Narendra Modi played the cruel joke on the women of this country as he has asked us to wait yet again, to claim our political right of representation?'', Singh said while addressing a press conference here.
The BJP must answer what is the logical link between census, delimitation and reservation, she asked. ''Did it take BJP nine years to hastily bring out this bill by just changing its name, as everything else remains the same but it seems that the BJP's message to the women of the country is wait for your rights but vote for us now'', she said.
Singh alleged that the BJP is not interested in securing political space for women and it was for this reason in 1989, BJP leaders late Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani had opposed the idea of 33 per cent reservation for women in local bodies, a bill envisioned by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi that was passed in the Lok Sabha but fell short of seven votes in the Rajya Sabha but was realised by P V Narsimha Rao in 1992. She claimed that the 2010 bill which is the main premise for the current women reservation bill was a result of the efforts of a high level committee that had been constituted by the Congress-led UPA government to conduct a comprehensive study on the status of women since 1989. ''It is as a result of that vision that we have more than 15 lakh women representatives across local bodies. In spite of the government's lack of interest, in 2016 the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi had demanded that the Modi government pass the Women Reservation Bill in line with the BJP’s slogan of "minimum government maximum governance'', she said.
''In 2023, months ahead of the general election, a 'nervous' BJP called a special session of the Parliament primarily faced with imminent challenges by the opposition bloc INDIA and tabled the women reservation bill as the 'Naari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam' .... which would be implemented on completion of census and delimitation'', Singh said. All that the BJP has given to the women of this country is the "deafening silence" of the Prime Minister and the Women and Child Development minister on crimes against women whether it was in Kathua, Unnao, Hathras, or on the streets of Delhi when the champion daughters of this country were being dragged on the road, she alleged. ''As far as Assam is concerned, there is certainly one woman who has been empowered at the cost of the rights of crores of Assamese women and that one woman is Riniki Bhuyan Sarma (wife of Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma) while this is a state with the highest rate of crimes against women and maternal mortality rate'', Singh said.
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