Launching a blistering attack on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for being male chauvinists, senior Congress leader and Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has said that women’s development would become a distant dream if the BJP came to power at the Centre.
Addressing a women’s conference, organised by the party, coinciding with the International women’s day here on Saturday, he said the women’s reservation bill, seeking to provide 33 per cent quota for women in Legislatures and Parliament, could never be passed in the Parliament if the BJP came to power. The bill would be passed only if a party, which believed in equality between men and women formed the government after the elections, Mr. Chidambaram said pitching in for yet another term for the Congress at the Centre.
He appealed to the large number of women who came to the conference, to support the Congress in the elections if they wanted the bill to be passed. Asserting that the women's bill would bring about a political revolution in the country, he said if 182 women MPs were elected to the 545 member Lok Sabha, it would make radical changes in the enactment of laws in the Parliament.
