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Pressure mounts on govt over women's bill

With only a week left of Parliament's winter session, pressure is mounting on the government not to await consensus to introduce the Women's Reservation bill in the current session itself.

At a dinner meeting hosted by the National Commission for Women on Thursday night, women political leaders, members of Parliament, activists and professionals impressed upon Union Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi and Minister of State for HRD Sumitra Mahajan the need to introduce the bill.

''If the government did not wait to build consensus on other crucial measures like the Insurance and Patents bills, the Women's Reservation bill also should be introduced in the current session and debated on the floor of the House,'' NCW chairperson Vibha Parthasarthi said.

Samata Party leader Jaya Jaitley said the tabling of the bill should be easier now as Janata Dal-United chief Sharad Yadav had agreed for its introduction with an amendment moved to incorporate a quota for other backward castes in the 33 per cent seats reserved for women.

''However, our party will not vote against the bill even if the amendment falls through,'' she added.

Joshi, while assuring the gathering that the government would try its best to introduce the bill in the winter session, said that it did not want to table the bill in an atmosphere of tension, acrimony and controversy.

''Today or tomorrow, the bill will be passed. If it can be done in an atmosphere of goodwill, it will be better,'' Minister of State Sumitra Mahajan added.

NCW members Syeda Hameed, Vijay Daksh and Poornima Advani were also present.

Addressing the two major concerns against the Women's Reservation bill -- that women MPs would be ''back-seat-driven'' by male members and that the reservations would be ''cornered'' by upper caste women -- the activists said neither of these was true.

Citing the experience at the panchayat and municipal corporation level, the activists said that reservation had worked well despite the lack of education and exposure of the women members. In most cases, women members were coming to the fore to set the developmental agenda, they added.

''Don't divide women along caste or communal lines. Women face similar problems of violence, lack of opportunity and biases regardless of which section of society they belong to,'' the activists added.

UNI

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