Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi on Thursday questioned the Centre’s decision to link women’s reservation with delimitation and described it as a well-planned ‘conspiracy’ to alter the electoral constituencies for a certain political motive. Her barrage of criticism was also laced with a ‘Chanakya’ swipe at the Home Minister Amit Shah, which left the latter smiling.
The Congress MP, responding to the Prime Minister’s charges of a delay of over three decades in granting reservations to women, recalled notable and watershed moments when the grand old party acted decisively to ensure greater representation of women in legislative bodies.
She said that the 33 per cent reservation for women in municipalities and urban bodies was first introduced by the Congress government under the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, marking the beginning of women’s political participation at the grassroots level.
“In 2010, under Dr Manmohan Singh’s leadership, the women’s reservation bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha, while in 2018, Rahul Gandhi penned a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking its implementation by 2019,” she further said in the Lok Sabha.
Congress leader also demanded answers from the government on why the Women’s reservation can’t be implemented in its current form, with two-thirds of seats earmarked for women, given the current strength of 543. Training guns at the Prime Minister, she said that he didn’t tell the entire story and repeatedly tried to project the BJP as the one championing the cause of women, but the reality is far from what he claimed.
Sharing a piece of advice, she remarked, “Those who keep provoking women are often caught by them,” evoking laughter in the House. Her ‘Chanakya’ jibe at the Home Minister also grabbed the House’s attention as she claimed that the women’s reservation was cleverly merged into delimitation and there was a well-laid-out plan to push it through the House.
“If Chanakya were alive today, he would have been surprised,” she said, in an apparent reference to the government’s handling of the women’s reservation bill and the political messaging around it. She said that today’s debate is not about women’s reservations, but rather it is about delimitation that seeks to erode the country’s federal structure.
Stating that it was a purely politically driven move to alter the state’s boundaries in the name of women’s reservation, she asked why there is a sudden urgency to link reservation with delimitation when, in 2023, the same bill mandated Census and Delimitation as a precursor to women’s reservation.
She said that the bill smacks of conspiracy and claimed that the government was rushing the bills through the House because it doesn’t want to give benefits to the backward and marginalised communities. “Parliament’s strength is said to be raised by about 50 percent, but it is utterly perplexing and surprising that the proposed amendment doesn’t have a word about the modalities and procedures for effecting such a monumental change in the Constitution,” she stated.
“This is an attack on the Constitution. If this bill is passed, this will mark an end to democracy,” she remarked. Priyanka also alleged that the Centre was playing to the gallery by proposing to implement women’s reservation while at the same time destroying the constitutional fabric by underhanded means.
"We strongly oppose all three bills and amendments proposed by the government. I appeal to the Prime Minister to take the right decision, and you will find our support," she concluded.