TMC leader dares BJP to raise women’s quota to 40% as done by Mamata in Bengal

Reminding the House that it was Mamata Banerjee who introduced gender parity in politics, TMC MPs in Parliament, on Wednesday, raised questions on BJP’s delay in bringing the Women’s Reservation Bill a decade after the Narendra Modi-led Central government came to power.

They invoked the famous song ‘catch me if you can’ dedicated to legendary boxer Muhammad Ali to dare the BJP to match the 40 per cent reservation for women already implemented by her party for Lok Sabha elections.

TMC chairperson Banerjee has ensured that 40 per cent of elected representatives from Bengal are women, the party MPs pointed out.

Addressing the Parliament on Wednesday, TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar said: “I stand today to support a Bill that has already been implemented by my leader Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal. It is the only state in the country that has a woman Chief Minister. While BJP rules 16 states, they do not have any woman Chief Minister.”

Trinamool has nine women MPs in the Lok Sabha, which means 40 per cent of the total TMC MPs in Lok Sabha are women. This is much higher than the national average of 14 per cent and the BJP’s record of having 13 per cent women MPs.

In the recently concluded Panchayat elections in Bengal, over 53.66 per cent of the Zilla Parishad winners, 42.97 per cent of the Panchayat Samiti winners, and 35.66 per cent of the Gram Panchayat winners were women.

Ghosh Dastidar also condemned linking the implementation of the Women’s Reservation Bill to the delimitation exercise, calling it BJP’s “electoral gimmick”.

Referring to Mamata, Ghosh Dastidar said: “She passionately advocated for the implementation of women’s reservation all her life, right from 1996 when it was first tabled. She was also a member of the committee headed by the then member Gita Mukherjee, trying to argue for the passing of the Bill.”

Meanwhile, TMC MP Mahua Moitra lambasted the BJP government stating that her party did not require legislation to ensure women’s empowerment and representation in electoral politics.

“It is Mamata Banerjee, India’s only female CM today, who is the mother of this Bill. She has given birth to the original idea and has, unconditionally, sent more than 33% of women MPs to this Parliament on her party ticket. What this government has brought today is not a Women’s Reservation Bill. It is a Women’s Reservation Rescheduling Bill and should be renamed as such. Its agenda is delayed,” Moitra said.

“It is my pride that I belong to the Trinamool Congress, a party that sends more than 33 per cent of women as elected representatives to Parliament. The Centre should hang its head in shame that India ranks 140 out of 196 countries in the Inter-Parliamentary Union League Table in women’s representation,”

she added.