The Hindu : BJP writes to Speaker on women's bill

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Saturday, Jul 26, 2003

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BJP writes to Speaker on women's bill

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI JULY 25. The Bharatiya Janata Party chief whip, V.K. Malhotra, has written to the Lok Sabha Speaker, Manohar Joshi, asking him to get the reactions of other parties on the BJP's suggestion relating to creating 181 "double-member" constituencies to help increase women's representation in the Lok Sabha.

"We have said that the BJP passed a resolution on women's reservation at its national executive committee meeting in Raipur earlier this month on the basis of discussions held at a meeting called by Mr. Joshi before the start of this session," Mr. Malhotra told reporters here today.

The party has conveyed to him that it would like to pass a bill on the issue in this very session on the basis of a political consensus.

Although now the Congress and the CPI (M) have said that there never was any agreement on the proposal of "double-member constituencies" at the Speaker's meeting, Mr. Malhotra insisted that the Congress had talked about "increasing the number of seats in the Lok Sabha".

He read out from the record of the proceedings of that meeting and quoted former Speaker, Shivraj Patil, who had attended the meeting on behalf of the Congress, as having endorsed the suggestion that the number of constituencies be increased to increase women's representation.

Mr. Malhotra said that if the suggestion made in the BJP's Raipur resolution was carried out, the number of women in the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies would go beyond 33 per cent.

There would be one-third or 33 per cent "double-member constituencies" each in the open general category and one reserved for women, and nearly eight to 10 per cent women would get elected without reservations.

He admitted that at the Speaker's meeting the CPI (M) had only promised to "study" any new proposal and then give its reaction, but since then some of the party's members, especially in its women's wing, have rejected the idea of women members as "add-ons" through the "double member" route.

The CPI (M), it seems, would prefer the bill as it stands introduced in the Lok Sabha.

Mr. Malhotra was critical of the comments made by the Opposition leaders in the debate on the alleged role of the CBI in the Babri Masjid demolition case.

"The comments by the Opposition leaders that punishment must be meted out to the guilty (that is, the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, and others) amounts to influencing the judiciary," he said.

"Whatever has to be done in the case has to be done by the courts, and comments like "we will not keep quiet till they (the BJP leaders) are punished" is an attempt to influence the courts,'' he said.

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