Like showing women ladoos they can’t eat: Harsimrat Badal on women’s quota bill

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, September 20

The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Wednesday joined opposition ranks to question the government over secrecy and potential delay in the implementation of the Women’s Reservation Bill provisions until the first census exercise following a delimitation is conducted.

“It is like showing women ladoos which they cannot have,” SAD Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal said participating in the day-long debate in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday on the Constitution (128th) Amendment Bill 2023 which reserves 33 per cent seats for women in Lok Sabha, state assemblies and the Delhi assembly.

Harsimrat Badal said the Bill would only be “another election stunt” unless immediately implemented.

“If the government could push the note ban, GST in great hurry, what is the problem in implementing the provisions of the women’s bill?” she asked, adding that the Sikh Gurus had always championed the cause of women’s empowerment and in line with the tenets of Sikh religion, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee had given Sikh women equal voting rights in 1925, even before India gained independence.

Harsimrat listed India’s poor place in global gender rankings and said that in the past 75 years, there has only been a 9 per cent increase in the number of women in Lok Sabha.

“After 75 years of independence, we have 14 per cent women in the Lok Sabha which comes to 78. In the first Lok Sabha there were 24 women MPs. This is a barely 9 per cent rise in 75 years. Even the speed of a bullock cart is more,” said the Akali Dal MP, adding that half of the state assemblies were yet to see women representatives.

Harsimrat said the devil lay in the detail. “Since 1885 for the first time, the Census has been delayed for two years. We do not know how long it will be delayed. Today there is no final date as to when women will get 33 per cent reservation. If that was the case, what was the urgency to bring the Bill?” she asked.

She said the BJP had promised 33 per cent women’s reservation in their 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha poll manifestoes and yet delays were woven into the very fabric of the Bill.