National executive members said that, though women members wanted to move a resolution on the issue, they were not allowed by leaders on the dais, including Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav, who said that the item was not on the agenda.
This is not the first time women in general have been ignored in the Janata Dal. Though the Dal, along with other United Front parties, has pledged 33 per cent reservation in the Fronts common minimum programme, coal minister Kanti Singh remains the lone woman in the 40-member Deve Gowda government.
Not to be outdone, Mahila Janata Dal president Saroj Dubey and others sent a letter to Gowda immediately after the meeting, demanding that he instruct the Karnataka government not to cooperate with Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited, the organisers of the contest.
They took strong exception to reports that Chief Minister JH Patel had come out of the Assembly to greet Amitabh Bachchan in the Vidhan Soudha in the middle of an important debate in the House.
The letter said that, on the one hand, the Dal talked about womens empowerment, and on the other did nothing about such events.
At the executive, Dubey raised the issue, saying that such beauty contests were against the Indian culture as they were nothing but nude demonstration and reduced women to a consumer good'. She was joined in by other members like Pramila Dandavate, Mrinal Gore, Kamala Sinha, Manju Mohan and Jayalakshmi.
But Patel said that there was nothing wrong in the contest as women were participating in it voluntarily.
Some male members deflected the issue by advising women members to first launch movements for the closure of brothels in various places.
A senior leader is learnt to have even interrupted Dandavate. He reportedly told the veteran socialist in a lighter vein: You women feel that beautiful women should not come to participate in such events!'.
