The Congress plans to celebrate former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s birth anniversary on Wednesday by drawing attention to the long-pending Women’s Reservation Bill that it says could have been passed by the previous UPA government had the BJP backed it. The Bill seeks to reserve a third of the seats in Parliament and Assemblies for women.
To highlight the issue, both Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi will address 8,000-odd women party activists at the Talkatora Stadium, Mahila Congress chief Shobha Oza announced here on Monday. The five-hour programme would be followed by the women forming a human chain to focus attention on the Bill, the need to tackle atrocities against women, and price rise. “All three issues affect women directly…,” Ms. Oza, who is also a Congress spokesperson, told journalists here. Permission, she said, had been sought from the government for the demonstration to be held at India Gate.
On August 12, Ms. Gandhi made a strong pitch for the Bill, saying the Congress was determined to fulfil its commitment to the women in the country. Addressing a State government-sponsored women’s self-help group in Congress-ruled Kerala, she had also said that her party would press the BJP-led NDA government to pass the Bill in the Lok Sabha.
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Asked why the Congress was raising the issue after the Parliament session was over, Ms. Oza said the women of the country, as also the Congress, would be happy even if the government passed the Bill in the next session. The Congress could not pass the Bill as it did not have the numbers in the Lok Sabha, but it succeeded in pushing it through the Rajya Sabha “despite opposition by some parties.”
She stressed that it was Rajiv Gandhi’s idea to empower women by starting reservation for them in panchayats: “Now, all Congress-ruled States have given 50 per cent reservation to women in local bodies while no BJP-ruled State has done so.”