Women's Bill proof of what stable govts can do, says PM Modi

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, September 22

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said the near unanimous passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill by both Houses of Parliament was evidence of the power of stable governments to take transformative decisions for national good.

Emulate India: UN official to other nations

Calling the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill a transformative move, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has urged parliamentarians around the world to adopt legislative measures in order to ensure women’s voices at the centre of their nations’ political discourse.

In his first public remarks after the parliamentary approval to the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023, which reserves one-third seats for women in Lok Sabha and state Assemblies, the PM made a strong pitch for a full majority government in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

“The passage of this Bill by both Houses after several failed attempts is evidence of the fact that when there is a full majority stable government, the country takes major decisions and crosses momentous milestones,” the PM said at a BJP event where women workers felicitated him in the presence of party president JP Nadda, who hailed the PM led dispensation for several “historical decisions, including 10% quota for economically weaker sections”.

The BJP simultaneously released posters on X, showing Modi flanked by women, holding up “lotus”. The BJP hopes to set a narrative with the passage of the women’s Bill. The PM’s push to women’s reservation agenda comes in a crucial poll year and amid growing importance of women as a voting bloc. For the first time since Independence, women voter participation in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll was 67.18%, higher than men’s at 67.10%.

In the 2022 Assembly polls (Goa, Uttarakhand, UP, Punjab & Manipur) women voters again outnumbered men. Amid a mammoth gathering of buoyant women BJP workers, the PM took a dig at past governments for tabling the Bill in Parliament for mere tokenism.

No earnest efforts were ever made to get the Bill passed, he said, adding that today “even the parties that used to tear up copies of the Bill have been forced to support it”.