The Union Cabinet cleared the Women’s Reservation Bill. The meeting of the Union Cabinet was held at Parliament House Annex in Delhi.
Highlights of the Bill
- The Constitution (One Hundred and Eighth Amendment) Bill, 2008 seeks to reserve one-third of all seats for women in the Lok Sabha and the state legislative assemblies. The allocation of reserved seats shall be determined by such authority as prescribed by Parliament.
- One third of the total number of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes shall be reserved for women of those groups in the Lok Sabha and the legislative assemblies.
- Reserved seats may be allotted by rotation to different constituencies in the state or union territory.
- Reservation of seats for women shall cease to exist 15 years after the commencement of this Amendment Act.
In this regard, Congress General Secretary in charge Communications took to X (former Twitter) and said, “The Congress party has been demanding the implementation of women’s reservation for a long time. We welcome the Union Cabinet decision reportedly coming forward and look forward to the details of the Bill.”
“This could have been thoroughly discussed in the all-party meeting before the special session and a consensus could have been reached instead of behind-the-scenes politics,” he further added.
Meanwhile, Union Minister Prahlad Singh Patel congratulated the Government over this in a social media post, however, the post was later deleted.
“Only the Modi Government had the moral courage to fulfil the demand for women’s reservation. Which was proved by the approval of the cabinet. Congratulations PM Narendra Modi and congratulations to the PM Modi Government,” the deleted post read.
Recently many parties were demanding that the Women’s Reservation Bill be passed in the special session of Parliament.
Welcoming Centre’s decision to approve Women Reservation Bill, West Bengal Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari called it a “great move” and said, “We heartily wanted it.”
“The Cabinet has given approval for the Women Reservation Bill. This is a great move. We heartily wanted it. In the land of Bengal, everyone worships women as Goddess Durga. Now, women will get a chance to run the country, what could be better news than this?” he told media.
Further, coming down heavily on Opposition alliance, Suvendu said that the Opposition alliance is an “alliance without ideology.”
“This is an opportunist alliance. This alliance has neither an ideology nor a policy. This is an alliance of some corrupt people, some familyists and some appeasers. People will not support them. They have 28 parties and we have only one man—Narendra Modi. This won’t last that long,” Adhikari said.
The BJP leaders further targeted Asaduddin Owaisi on the Muslim votes and said that people vote for him only for their benefit.
“The people who are with Owaisi vote for him for their benefit. These people get LPG cylinders under the Ujjwala scheme through Modi ji, they get sanitary facilities from Swatch Bharat Yojna, they get free Covid vaccine, they get ration too, but they vote for Congress in Karnataka, in Telangana they vote for Owaisi and Chandrashekhar Rao and they vote for Stalin in Tamil Nadu.”
On September 18, Owaisi said that he does not “care” about the INDIA alliance as it would be “suffocating” to be a part of it.
Hitting out at the opposition alliance for not standing up against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on their ideology, Owaisi said, “Why are they not standing up against the BJP on their ideology? They told us that if they gave us a ticket, they wouldn’t get a single vote from Hindus. I am saying this in the open, they say this behind closed doors.
“Congress MP Rahul Gandhi won in Wayanad because the Muslim League, the party’s ally in Kerala, saved him from “drowning,” Owaisi asserted.
(with inputs from ANI)
