NewzVille Desk
The Congress on Friday said that the issue of women’s reservation is already settled as the bill in this regard was passed unanimously 30 months ago. The party reiterated and reaffirmed its opposition to holding of special session of the Parliament on April 16, 17 and 18 in the midst of election campaigning and said that the BJP apparently wanted to use special Parliament session for electoral gains in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu Assembly elections and also for diverting attention from the government’s multiple failures.
The party said, the way India had been sidelined on the issue of ceasefire in West Asia and Pakistan had occupied the centrestage, reflected the failure of the Indian foreign policy and now therefore, the government wanted to divert the attention.
The Congress Working Committee met on Friday which was presided over by the Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and attended among others by Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, KC Venugopal, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and three Chief Ministers of Congress-ruled states.
Briefing reporters after the meeting, party general secretaries Jairam Ramesh and Mukul Wasnik disclosed that the CWC held discussion about the proposed special session being held on April 16, 17 and 18. They said, till today, the party had not received any formal agenda for the special session.
Jairam Ramesh noted that the government now wants to claim the credit again for implementing women’s reservation in Parliament and state assemblies when the bill had already been passed unanimously in September 2023.
He pointed out, that time the government had said that as per Article 334-A, reservation would be implemented after the delimitation of the parliamentary and assembly constituencies, which could be done only after the census.
Calling the Prime Minister a master of U-turns, Jairam Ramesh said asserted that in fact, the Prime Minister owes an apology to the women of the country for delaying its implementation, recalling that the Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge had demanded in 2023 that the law should be implemented from the 2024 general elections itself.
“Issue is delimitation and not the women’s reservation as it had been unanimously passed unanimously two and a half years ago”, he remarked.
Ramesh reiterated the party’s stand on the delimitation that it is a serious matter with far-reaching consequences, so it should not be rushed through and should be discussed in all-party meeting before being brought up in the Parliament.
He said, not only the southern states will be put at a disadvantage, but the smaller states like Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana and North-eastern states will also be put at a great disadvantage if the government goes ahead with its proposal of 50 percent increase in the current number of seats in Parliament for every state.
The senior Congress leader reiterated the party’s demand that the special session should be held only after April 29 when the election process in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu is complete. He announced that the Congress president will be convening a meeting of all the opposition leaders before the special session of the Parliament.
