Women quota Bill may soon become a reality

With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) agreeing in principle to the 33 per cent quota for women in legislatures and the Left asking for reservation of 180 seats in the present Lok Sabha for women, the process of sidelining Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav""who want no fixed quotas reserved for women"" seems to be complete.

The government is said to have two sets of Bills on women's reservation ready. The first, introduced during the HD Deve Gowda regime in 1996, seeks to reserve 33 per cent of the existing number of seats for women.

Since this Bill had failed to garner political consensus, a new Bill that seeks to enhance the number of seats in Parliament by just over 33 per cent was drafted. This Bill is also ready.

"Both drafts are ready. As soon as a political consensus emerges and a two-thirds majority for the Bill is ensured, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government will be ready to bring either of the Bills to Parliament," said a top source in the government.

As the Bill will have to be a Constitution amendment Bill, it will need support of two-thirds of majority. If both the BJP and the Left parties agree on the same draft, Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav's parties will not be able to block the Bill.

The government is ready to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha from 542 to about 723 seats, of which 180 seats will be reserved for women.

However, the BJP and the Left parties have termed this proposal not practical. The BJP is said to have given the government a "blank cheque" to bring out the women's reservation Bill, at a meeting which was also attend by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

The government also met the two Left parties separately over the issue.

According to BJP's parliamentary party spokesperson Sushma Swaraj, who was present at the meeting, the BJP would acquiesce to any Bill on reservation for women, but felt that increasing the strength of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha as well as the state legislatures was unwieldy.

"We will agree to it if everyone else finds it acceptable, but I asked the home minister whether he sees this being implemented in his own parliamentary lifetime," she said.

The BJP said ideally they would like to see the 1996 Bill being placed before Parliament but the heavy opposition of RJD and Samajwadi Party seems to have stymied that Bill.

"Advaniji told the home minister that apart from a quota within a quota formula, any other formulation was acceptable, including the Election Commission formulation that political parties amend their constitution to reserve 33 per cent of tickets for women candidates," said Swaraj.

During consultations with the CPI and CPI(M), the Left said to have told the home minister and that the new Bill is too cumbersome. The Left said that the new bill posed many problems regarding the delimitation of constituencies.

CPI sources also revealed that another proposal, that of increasing the number of seats in each state by 33 per cent was also suggested by the government.