A will to a way

 Since 22 years the much debated 33% women reservation bill has been in the political limbo and routinely punctuated by frayed tempers and war of words since 1996. The bill was introduced in Parliament but it lapsed each time when the House was dissolved and was re-introduced by the Government of the day. The seats were proposed to be reserved in rotation and would have been determined by draw of lots in such a way that a seat would be reserved only once in three consecutive general elections. The Rajya Sabha passed the bill on March 9 2010 during the UPA rule but the Lok Sabha never voted on the bill. The bill lapsed after the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha in 2014. Almost all major political parties felt it useful to promise 33% women reservation. The Congress, BJP, TMC etc have mentioned the bill in their respective manifestos. However when it came to the test in the Lok Sabha, the parties never got to even consider passage of the bill. The main grouse against the bill was that it seeks to provide quotas to one gender but deprived the other gender. The argument was that in democracy and especially in India, if women constituted around 50% of the population, then what stopped the women from voting for women? The other point that has been often cited is that instead of providing constitutional reservation, political parties should instead give 33% tickets to women candidates. After more than two decades, the Biju Janata Dal(BJD) supremo and Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik made it a reality when he announced that his party will give 33% of party tickets to women candidates for the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Naveen termed his party’s decision as a “benchmark for women’s empowerment” in the country. That will mean that the ruling BJD in Odisha will field women candidates for at least seven out of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state. At present, there are three women Lok Sabha MPs from Odisha. The BJD had won 20 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in 2014. Not long afterwards another party supremo and chief minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee also announced that her party would set up not 33% or 35% but 41% women candidate for the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Mamata Banerjee on March 12, released her party’s list of candidates for the general election, naming 17 women among the party’s contestants from 42 seats in the state and fielding new faces from 19 constituencies. She said the TMC had nominated 41% women candidates for 2019 as against 35% the party set up in 2014. The BJP had taunted the Congress about the bill being stalled in the Lok Sabha in 2010. However, the party which won a brute majority in 2014 hasn’t done anything about it. In fact the Modi government showed its intent when it hastily introduced the 10% job quota bill for poor upper castes on January 9,2019. However, when it came to women’s reservation the BJP did precious little. Earlier, the Modi government introduced the triple talaq bill, officially known as the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2018, on December 27 and got it passed. These above instances, clearly point out that if political parties were sincere they could always find out a way to achieve what they promise.