The Congress fielded a high-powered line-up — including Congress Parliamentary Party chief Sonia Gandhi and former party president Rahul Gandhi — in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday to express the party’s support for the women’s reservation Bill reserving 33% of the seats in Parliament and Assemblies for women. The party made a strong case for a caste census and reservations for Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes within the women’s quota. The leaders said the legislation, Constitution (128th Amendment) Bill, 2023, should be implemented immediately, rather than linking it to a delimitation exercise that cannot be held until 2026.
‘Quota within quota’ Apart from the Congress, an array of MPs belonging to many other Opposition parties — including the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) — demanded an OBC quota within the proposed reservation for women. Supriya Sule of the NCP, Dimple Yadav (SP), and Sangeeta Azad (BSP) were among those who said that while they supported the Bill, the government should ensure quotas for OBCs. Janata Dal(U) MP Rajiv Ranjan Singh Lalan said if the government had such an intention, it would have started the caste census in 2021. When the United Progressive Alliance government introduced its women’s reservation Bill, which was passed by the Rajya Sabha in 2010, there was no provision for any such quota either. The Bill was grounded in the Lok Sabha as the then-government could not persuade parties friendly to it to give up their demand for OBC quota. The Congress has since changed its own stance, and the INDIA bloc parties had demanded a caste census in their resolution at the Opposition alliance’s meeting in Bengaluru in July. Gandhi, who initiated the debate on the Bill from the Opposition’s side, said that along with the immediate implementation of the reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and the Assemblies, provision should be made for reservation for women from the SC, ST, and OBC communities after conducting a caste census. Gandhi said it was the dream of her husband and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to bring in reservation for women; his government had tried to start that process with reservations in local bodies through a Bill, which was defeated in the Rajya Sabha by seven votes in 1989. “Rajiv Gandhi’s dream is only half fulfilled. It will be fulfilled with the passage of this Bill,” she said.
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