Mulayam for only 10 per cent reservation for women

Demanding that provision for reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and the assemblies be reduced to 10 per cent instead of the proposed 33 per cent, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav on Tuesday said the onus of fielding women candidates from any constituency should be left to the parties and not the election commission.

"There are glaring deficiencies in the proposed bill and only women of higher strata will stand to benefit from it," the samajwadi party president said referring to the women's reservation bill at a news conference in Lucknow.

"The provision for reservation of women should be confined to only 10 per cent instead of the proposed 33 percent and the onus of fielding women candidates from any seat be left to the parties and not the election commission," Mulayam said.

He said the SP was in favour of providing reservation to women 'but it should not be done at the cost of men.'

"The bill is intended to eliminate the leadership among the minorities especially Muslims and backwards," he alleged and added that he would soon embark on a countrywide tour to create public opinion against the bill and 'expose the Congress-Bharatiya Janata Party connivance' on the issue.

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"The Congress and the BJP have joined hands on the issue though neither has the mandate to effect such a major amendment in the constitution," he said.

Mulayam said he would not object if the reservation was increased to 15 or 20 per cent but the onus for fielding women was left with the political parties and not the EC.

"There is no country in the world barring South Africa where there is a reservation for women but there also, it is only 10 per cent," he pointed out.

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Mulayam said his party favoured reservation for women of backward castes, minorities, especially Muslims, and dalits in the women reservation bill on the basis of their population.

He termed the proposal for 33 per cent increase in the seats in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha as 'impractical'.

Mulayam said the experience of reservation in the panchayats had not been satisfactory and the menfolk discharged the functions of the women office bearers.

He said there were only 2 Muslim women MPs in the Lok Sabha and there was only 1 Muslim MP from the 174 Lok Sabha seats from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and Delhi.

He said he would ask the Muslim, Dalit and Backward Community members of other political parties to voice their opposition to the bill in their respective organisations.

"Many leaders in other parties are against the bill in its present form but are not airing their views for fear of the whip," he alleged.

Leaders like Uma Bharti, Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav have also opposed the bill in its present form, he said. Yadav also opposed the proposed rotation policy in the seats for women saying that if it happened, no MP would evince interest in the development of his constituency as he would not be sure if he could contest from same area again.

"These people (Congress and BJP leaders) think that they are even wiser than the likes of Nehru, Patel, Prasad and Ambedkar," he said.