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NEW DELHI : Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Monday asserted the real issue with the government’s move to bring bills in a special sitting of Parliament this week is delimitation, not women’s reservation, and claimed the reported delimitation proposal is “extremely dangerous” as well as an “assault” on the Constitution itself.
Gandhi stressed that any delimitation involving an increase in the strength of the Lok Sabha must be politically, and not just arithmetically, equitable.
In an article published in The Hindu, she also alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s real intention now is to further “delay and derail” the caste census.
Prime Minister Modi is making appeals to opposition parties to support bills that the government wants to “bulldoze” through Parliament in a “special session” when the election campaign in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal will be at its peak, she said.
“There can be only one reason for the extraordinary hurry, which is to derive political advantage and place the Opposition on the defensive,” she alleged.
The prime minister is, as usual, being economical with the truth, Gandhi claimed.
Tagging Gandhi’s article, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said she has written about how the real concern in the important process of women’s reservation are the risks and inequities posed by a “rushed delimitation”.
Noting that Parliament passed the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 unanimously in September 2023 during a special session, Sonia Gandhi said the law introduced Article 334-A in the Constitution which mandated one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabhas, scheduled to come into effect after the completion of the next Census and the Census-based delimitation process.
“The Opposition had not asked for this condition. In fact, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, had forcefully demanded that the reservation provision be implemented from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections itself. For reasons best known to itself, the government did not agree,” she pointed out in her article.
“Now, we are given to understand that Article 334-A will be amended to make women’s reservation applicable from 2029 itself. Why did it take the Prime Minister 30 months to make his U-turn? And why can he not wait a few weeks to convene the special session?” she said.
Opposition leaders have written to the government not once but thrice requesting that an all-party meeting be convened after the last phase of elections is over in West Bengal on April 29, to discuss what the new proposals of the government are, but that perfectly reasonable request has been turned down, Sonia Gandhi said.
“Instead, the prime minister has resorted to writing op-eds, making appeals to political parties, and organising ‘sammelans’. It is an underhand tactic that reflects the prime minister’s one-upmanship and his ‘my way or the highway’ approach to decision-making,” she said.
Gandhi also said The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 stands on the shoulders of the achievement of the 73rd and the 74th Constitution Amendment Bills following whose passage reservation for women in panchayats and nagarpalikas became a law.
“The last decadal Census was due in 2021. The Modi government kept postponing it. One consequence of this has been that over 10 crore people have been deprived of their legal entitlements under the National Food Security Act, 2013 that provides the basis for the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yoiana,” she said.
Gandhi further noted that Census operations have begun only after an inexplicable delay of five years.
“It is being proudly claimed that it is a digital Census. Senior officials have themselves publicly declared that because of its digital nature, most of the population enumeration numbers will be available in 2027 itself. The government’s excuses for its tearing hurry to call this session and conduct delimitation are evidently hollow,” Gandhi said.
Almost exactly a year ago, the prime minister announced that the 2027 Census would also be a caste census and this was after filing affidavits in the Supreme Court and answering questions in Parliament rejecting the idea of conducting a caste census, she said.
“This was also after the prime minister accused Congress leaders calling for a caste census as suffering from what he called ‘an urban naxal mindset’,” Gandhi said.
Be that as it may, Census 2027 is supposed to enumerate the population by caste in order to give greater meaning to social justice and empowerment, she said.
Bihar and Telangana have carried out comprehensive caste surveys in their respective states, with the whole process not taking more than six months, she pointed out.
“It is clear, therefore, that the propaganda that a caste census will delay the publication of the Census 2027 is just not true. In fact. the Prime Minister’s real intention now is to further delay and derail the caste census,” she alleged.
Noting that Parliament’s special sitting is scheduled to begin on April 16, Gandhi said till now, there has been no official proposal shared with MPs on what exactly the government wants the session to consider.
It appears that some formula for delimitation is being suggested, she said.
“Any delimitation must be preceded by a Census exercise as in the past. And it goes without saying that any delimitation involving an increase in the strength of the Lok Sabha must be politically — and not just arithmetically — equitable,” Gandhi asserted.
States that have been pioneers in family planning, and smaller states must not be placed at an absolute or relative disadvantage, she argued.
“A proportionate increase may, in fact, result in the loss of relative influence because the differences in absolute numbers get magnified,” Gandhi opined.
Pointing out that The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 provides for reservation within reservation, she said this means that the one-third of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes respectively will also be reserved for women.
“During the debate in September 2023, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha (Mallikarjun Kharge) had demanded that a similar reservation be also provided for women belonging to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).Reservation for OBCs has been already provided for in higher education and government employment,” she said.
“The Monsoon session of Parliament will begin in mid-July. The heavens will not fall if the government were to call an all-party meeting after April 29, to discuss its proposals with the Opposition, allowing time for a public debate and then have the Constitution Amendment Bills considered in the Monsoon session,” she said.
There is simply no justification, except “narrative management during troubled times”, for this tearing hurry to “bulldoze” extremely far-reaching changes to our polity, Gandhi said.
“The process is deeply flawed and anti-democratic. Reservation for women is not the issue here. That has already been settled. The real issue is delimitation which, based on the information unofficially available, is extremely dangerous and an assault on the Constitution itself,” Gandhi said.
The Budget session of Parliament has been extended, and a special three-day sitting of the House has been convened from April 16 to 18, during which amendments to the ‘Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam’, more commonly known as the Women Reservation Act, will be brought for its implementation in 2029.
While elections in Puducherry, Assam and Kerala were held on April 9, polls in West Bengal would be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. In Tamil Nadu, polls will be held in a single phase on April 23. (Agencies)
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