Women Aspirations Get Wings, Maximum Benefit Of Reservation To Come To UP

Lucknow, September 20 (TNA) As soon as the new building of the Indian Parliament became functional on Tuesday the long-pending Women's Reservation Bill to reserve one-third of the seats for women in Parliament and Legislative Assemblies was tabled. PM Modi thus made a big political move by proposing a constitutional amendment for the 'Nari Shakti Vandan Act' giving reservations to women.

This decision of PM Modi is such that even the opposition is expressing their happiness. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is also hopeful of getting the blessings of 43 crore women in the country. The women of Uttar Pradesh (UP) will get the most benefits if the Women's Reservation Bill is passed. Here 26 Lok Sabha and 132 Assembly seats will be reserved for women. Even after 75 years of independence, half the population here could not get proper representation.

Presence of women of UP will increase in Parliament and Assembly

This first bill presented by the Central Government on the first day of the proceedings of the country's new Parliament is very special. Under this bill, apart from the Lok Sabha, there is a provision for reservation in the state assemblies also. If this bill becomes law, 181 seats in the Lok Sabha will be reserved for women. Out of these 181 seats, 33 percent will be reserved for SC-ST.

That means out of 181, there will be 60 women MPs from ST-SC category. There are 82 women MPs in the current Parliament. This bill will apply directly only to the representatives elected by the public. This means that this reservation will not apply to Rajya Sabha or Legislative Councils. And women in UP will get the most benefit from this bill.

At present, out of 403 members of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, 48 are women. This means that the participation of women in the House of UP is only 12 percent, which is very low in terms of the proportion of their population. Their participation in the Upper House i.e. Legislative Council is only 6 percent. Whereas the population of women in UP is more than 9 crore 53 lakh.

Even in the Lok Sabha, there are only 11 women MPs out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP. In this way, their representation in Lok Sabha seats from UP is less than the country's average of 15 percent. Only 14 percent of the total Lok Sabha seats in UP are held by women. The presence of women on the political scene of the state is very less. In the last assembly elections, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi had fielded more than a hundred women to increase the representation of women in the assembly, but she was not successful.

But now when the Women's Reservation Bill becomes law, it will be mandatory to give tickets to women of every party and then the presence of women in the Parliament and Legislative Assembly of the country will increase. People associated with politics in UP say that giving reservation to women will increase their political participation, which will usher in the real era of their liberation. And with this, women will be able to get equal rights in the true sense of society.

Akhilesh, Mayawati and Congress extend support

This is the reason why Akhilesh Yadav, head of the largest opposition party in Uttar Pradesh, has supported the Women's Reservation Bill. Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav has also said that there should be a balance of gender justice and social justice in women's reservation. In this, reservation for women from backward, Dalit, minority, tribal (PDA) communities should be clear in the form of a certain percentage.

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati has also supported the bill presented in Parliament regarding women's reservation but has put a condition. She has said that considering the number of women, even if the percentage of reservation had been 50 instead of 33, we would have supported it. Under this, BSP demands implementation of separate quota for women belonging to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe.

It is expected that this will be discussed in Parliament. The statements of these UP leaders have proved that the opposition camp does not even have a chance to be unhappy with the move made by PM Modi with the Women's Reservation Bill. That's why the Congress party also said that this is the result of their efforts. The Congress party has been demanding the implementation of women's reservation for a long time.

— Rajendra Kumar