Congress flags ‘political motive’ behind women’s reservation Bill

New Delhi: The Congress on Friday accused the Narendra Modi government of playing politics in the name of women’s reservation law and asserted that the proposed delimitation exercise linked to it was “not constitutional” and could have “grave consequences” that warrants thorough deliberation after the ongoing assembly polls.

The Congress Working Committee met here to deliberate on the government’s move to amend the women’s reservation law, the proposed delimitation exercise and the West Asia conflict.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge will now call a meeting of top leaders of all opposition parties, most likely on April 15, to discuss and formulate a joint strategy for the “special session” of Parliament from April 16 to 18, during which the government is set to bring bills for amending the women quota law.

The top Congress leadership while deliberating on the issue said they were in favour of the women reservation law implementation, but were opposed to the “rushed” delimitation exercise to increase the number of seats in Lok Sabha solely for “political gains”.

Both Kharge and former party president Rahul Gandhi said the issue was not women reservation implementation but the manner in which the delimitation exercise was being pushed in the midst of the election process. Several Congress leaders of the south, including Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaih, Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor, opposed the reported proposal of the government to increase Lok Sabha seats by about 50 per cent, which, they claimed, would hurt the southern states as they would proportionately fall behind the big states of the North.

In his opening remarks, Kharge said the government is convening the Parliament sitting with the sole intention of securing political advantage, which is a “violation” of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC). He said the proposed amendments are of such a nature that they can potentially have a profound impact on the country’s electoral system.

“Therefore, we will formulate a collective strategy by holding discussions on these issues with our colleagues in the opposition as well. We will move forward unitedly,” Kharge asserted.

“The Congress remains steadfastly committed to ensuring women’s empowerment and social justice,” Gandhi said.

The meeting, chaired by Kharge with Congress Parliamentary Party chief Sonia Gandhi attending the meeting through video conferencing.