What is the Women’s Reservation Bill, why is it hanging in limbo for 27 years? If passed, history will be made

Women’s Reservation Bill can be introduced in the special session of Parliament to fix 33 percent quota for women in Lok Sabha and Assemblies. Congress has been demanding passing the bill in the Lok Sabha for 9 years. On Monday (September 18), a meeting of the Union Cabinet was held under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in which the bill is reported to have been approved. According to sources, PM Modi government has approved the bill. After this, the discussion has also intensified that the government can introduce a bill in the special session.

This bill has been hanging in limbo for 27 years. Although, it had got the approval of Rajya Sabha in the year 2008, but could not be presented in the Lok Sabha. Due to this, a law has not been made regarding one-third quota for women in Parliament and Assemblies. First let us know what is there in this bill-

What is Women’s Reservation Bill?
In the Women’s Reservation Bill, there is a proposal for 33 percent or one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and the Legislative Assemblies of all the states. There is also talk of reservation of one-third seats for women belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes out of 33 percent quota. The bill also proposes that reserved seats should be rotated after every general election. Reserved seats may be allocated by rotation in different constituencies of states and union territories. According to the data presented by the government in December last year, at present the number of women MPs in the Lok Sabha is 78, which is 15 percent of the total number of MPs. At the same time, there are 14 percent women MPs in Rajya Sabha.

The bill has been hanging in the balance for 27 years
In the year 1996, the then Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda had introduced the Women’s Reservation Bill in the House for the first time, but it could not be passed due to huge opposition. After this, the bill was presented in the House from time to time under different governments, but due to huge opposition, it has not been approved yet. The biggest opposition to the bill was seen in the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1998 and 1999. There was a high-voltage drama in the House regarding the bill and not only heated debate between the ruling party and the opposition, but the bill was snatched from the hands of the Law Minister and its copies were torn in the House. Although the bill got approval in the Rajya Sabha in 2008 during the UPA government, the bill has been stuck in limbo for 27 years due to not being introduced in the Lok Sabha.

Many states do not have even 10 percent women MLAs
Talking about assemblies, in many places the number of women MLAs is not even 10 percent. The number of women in the assemblies of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Odisha, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura and Puducherry is less than 10 percent. . At present the number of women members in the assemblies of Bihar, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi is 10 to 12 percent. Apart from these, the number of women MLAs in Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Jharkhand is 14.44 percent, 13.7 percent and 12.35 percent respectively.

Most women MPs at this time
The Women’s Reservation Bill is being brought at a time when the number of women MPs is higher than before. At present there are 14.36 percent women members in the Lok Sabha. There were 726 women candidates in the fray in the 2019 general elections, out of which 78 candidates reached the Lok Sabha after winning the elections. In the first Lok Sabha elections held in 1951, there were a total of 4.41 percent i.e. 22 women MPs, whereas in the second Lok Sabha elections, 45 women candidates were in the fray. In 1977, the number of women MPs was only 77 percent.

If the Women’s Reservation Bill is passed…
If the Women’s Reservation Bill is passed, then out of the total 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, 179 will be reserved for women. At the same time, out of 4,123 seats in various assemblies, 1,361 will be reserved for women.

Also read:
Women Reservation Bill: When the Women’s Reservation Bill was torn in the House, Mamta caught the collar of the SP MP…Rajiv Gandhi-Narasimha Rao had initiated the bill