AN ATTEMPT by India’s government to pass legislation reserving a third of all seats for women in parliament provoked uproar today as opposition politicians forced repeated adjournments.
The government had been confident that the Women Reservation Bill, which has been stalled for 14 years, would gather the required votes to pass in the upper house today after being presented on International Women’s Day.
The upper house was adjourned twice today as politicians opposing the bill shouted down speakers and refused to allow the introduction of the proposed legislation and a scheduled debate.
The ruling Congress party, its allies and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have pledged their support in public, but several socialist parties oppose it.
They argue that the law, which would reserve a third of seats for women in the parliament and state assemblies, would lead to a monopoly by upper-caste women at the expense of lower caste and religious minority Muslims.
“We are not anti-women, but we want reservations for women hailing from minority and backward classes first,” Mulayam Singh Yadav, a leader of the pro-Muslim Samajwadi (Socialist) party said outside parliament.
Attempts to pass the bill have been blocked by various political groups in the past who have demanded separate quotas for women from Muslim and low-caste communities.
Yadav said the bill was an attempt by the Congress and the BJP to appease the rich and the influential upper class.
The controversial proposal to reserve 33 per cent of seats, first introduced in parliament in 1996, would dramatically increase women’s membership in both houses of parliament where they now occupy about one in 10 seats.
Because the bill involves a constitutional change, it needs the approval of two-thirds of legislators in the upper house after which it will go before the lower house where it also requires a two-thirds majority.
Women currently occupy 59 seats out of 545 in the lower house. There are just 21 women in the 248-seat upper house.
“Our government is committed towards women empowerment. We are moving towards one-third reservation for women in parliament and state legislatures,’ Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh told a women’s leadership summit on Saturday (March 6).
Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress party and regarded as India’s most powerful politician, has thrown her weight behind the bill, saying she attaches the “highest importance” to it.
It will be a “gift to the women of India if it is introduced and passed” on International Women's Day, she told party lawmakers last week.
Political analysts said the government was testing the waters by introducing it in the upper house first instead of the lower house, where most proposed legislation is sent.
Some accused the government of playing politics by seeking to appease women by proposing the legislation but without having any realistic chance of it passing.
Panchayats - local governing bodies in towns and villages - already reserve a portion of their seats for women and experts say the move has given women greater status in their communities.