Brinda reels off statistics to show OBC women not disadvantaged
10 Mar 2010, 0325 hrs IST, ET Bureau
Topics:BJP Brinda Karat Left parties Women Reservation Bill
NEW DELHI: If the UPA government managed to pass the Women's
Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha, it was thanks to the BJP and Left
parties. EUPHORIC: Brinda Karat & Sushma Swaraj celebrate. (PTI)
Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, while
initiating the discussion on the legislation, extended his party's
full backing to the move. "The myth is that reservations create a
privileged society. The truth is that nature created all of us as
equals, the Constitution also provided equality. However, aberrations
in the society translated some equals into unequals,'' he said.
"Reservation, therefore, is an affirmative action which is intended to
wash away the reality of inequality and translate it into a vision of
equality. Those who have been made unequal will today become equal
participants in decision-making. Reservation quotas for women,
therefore, become an essential instrument to jump-start the process of
equality,'' Mr Jaitley said while making out a strong case for
empowering women.
He trashed anti-rotation murmurs and the 'quota-within-quota' demand
put forward by social justice parties. "Rotation is the most suitable
principle for sex-based reservation. It will ensure that in the 15
years, the life of this amendment, each constituency in the country
sends, at least once, a woman representative to Parliament. This will
increase the horizontal spread of activism,'' he argued.
Citing the Constitution, Mr Jaitley said it provides for caste-based
reservations only for SCs and STs, and not for OBCs and minorities as
demanded by the critics of the bill. "When there is no reservation for
other communities, there is no reason why there must be quotas for
women belonging to these communities."
Additionally, most candidates selected by political parties will
mirror the social character of the constituencies.''
Jayanthi Natarajan, while participating in the discussion on behalf of
the Congress, thanked Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh and the UPA for getting the bill passed in the Rajya
Sabha. "No other party or government had the guts to take it forward
and ensure that it became a reality,'' she said.
Ms Natarajan's claim was contested later by CPM member Brinda Karat,
who frowned on attempts by the Congress to appropriate sole credit for
the bill. "Please don't forget the contributions made by women's
organisations and groups over the years. They were also responsible
for getting the move on track,'' she said, and hoped that the prime
minister would give due credit to them in his reply to the debate.
The CPM leader also rejected the demand for setting aside seats for
OBCs and minorities within the 33% quota. "It's not just for one
class,'' Ms Karat asserted, and cited statistics on female
representation from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh assemblies. "They show
that it's not a disadvantage to be an OBC woman. In Bihar, out of the
243 seats, 24 were represented in the Assembly by women. And within
this category, 70.8% of the seats were bagged by OBCs, SCs and
minorities. In UP, the figure was an impressive 65%,'' she argued.
BSP leader Satish Chandra Mishra opposed the bill in its present form,
and said that the reservation quota for women should be fixed in
direct proportion to their population (50%). He also advocated
amending the bill to set aside separate seats for SC/ST women, and not
slicing it from the main quota.
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