The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government will make another attempt to pass the contentious Women’s Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the two outside supporters of the government, along with the Janata Dal (United), on Tuesday morning.
These three parties have 45 MPs in the Lok Sabha. While Lalu Prasad’s RJD has a fierce rivalry with Sharad Yadav’s JD(U) in Bihar and Jharkhand, on the Women’s Bill, the two sides have come together.
While Congress president Sonia Gandhi is keen to see her pet Bill passed, Congress managers are facing major problems. If the SP, RJD and Mayawati’s BSP withdraw support from the UPA, it would be dependent on Opposition parties like the BJP and the Left to pass crucial Bills in Parliament in future. The big question before the Congress is: can it afford to totally isolate its outside supporters for the women’s reservation Bill and depend on volatile Opposition parties to sail through for the coming years?
The dilemma was evident in the meeting convened by the PM this afternoon with the Opposition parties supporting the Bill. Both the BJP and the Left asked the government to go ahead and pass the Bill today after a debate. When the PM mooted the proposal to hold an all-party meeting, CPI(M)’s Sitaram Yechury and BJP’s Arun Jaitley rejected the idea pointing out the government did not have any new formula to discuss.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee reminded them that the government also needed to pass the crucial appropriation Bills and the Finance Bill.
In the Rajya Sabha, the stage was all set to pass the historic Bill but the government finally did not press for the contentious piece of legislation. When Union Law Minister M Veerappa Moily moved the Bill to be discussed and passed, all the books, pen stands, papers and other items were removed from the centre table of the secretariat in the well of the Upper House. The reason: the government prepared the floor for voting and ensured the opponents of the Bill could not throw objects to disrupt the House.
Marshalls were deployed but finally the government managers took a cautious step to diffuse the tension. Lalu Prasad searched for key UPA managers like Pranab Mukherjee to make the government call a meeting on Tuesday. He couldn’t get Mukherjee as the latter was busy in a meeting with Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.
Prasad later told reporters that if the government brought the Bill in its present form, he would definitely withdraw support from the government. “This is a conspiracy to finish strong regional leaders like us to pave way for one particular person. We will not allow this to happen,” he said.
“We had supported this government voluntarily to keep the communal forces like the BJP away from power. But, now we find the Congress has joined hand with the BJP and even Left parties are supporting their sinister attempts. I want to know how many women were fielded by these parties in the last election. How many poor women got tickets from the BJP and the Congress? Don’t forget, India essentially comprises of poor people. There can’t be any reservation without taking care of this section of the society,” Prasad said.
