Scared of INDIA, BJP brought women’s bill to hoodwink people before LS polls: CPI(M-L)L

The Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation on Wednesday claimed that the Narendra Modi government has brought the women’s reservation bill to hoodwink people ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as it was scared by the opposition bloc INDIA.

Addressing a press conference here, CPI(M-L)L General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya Bhattacharya asserted that as the bill will be implemented after delimitation, which would take place post-census, it is tantamount to ''indefinite deferment''.

He likened the bill to the Cripps Mission of the British regime, which was rejected by Mahatma Gandhi calling it a ''post-dated cheque on a failing bank''.

The Cripps Mission was sent by the British government to India in March 1942 to obtain Indian cooperation for World War II and sought to provide an Indian Union with a dominion status after the war. “It’s a Ullu-Banao (hoodwink people) bill. The BJP-led Central government is not serious about implementing it. The bill has been brought out of fear. They are scared of INDIA, they are scared of the opposition unity,” Bhattacharya said.

The bill which deserved the most serious legislative treatment seemed to have been drafted in haste, the Left leader claimed.

A bill for which women have been fighting for decades with sustained support from a broad spectrum of progressive political forces cannot be reduced to yet another “electoral gimmick”, he said.

“The pretension of urgency gets exposed when the implementation of the bill is made contingent on the completion of the census and consequent delimitation. The Centre should implement it immediately if it is really serious,” Bhattacharya said.

Modi's is the only government in India’s history, which has failed to conduct the decadal census and it must explain the reason for not conducting it, said Bhattacharya.

“The idea of deferred implementation of such an urgent legislation only reminds us of Gandhi's famous remark on the Cripps Mission offer of Dominion Status: a post-dated cheque drawn on a failing bank,” the CPI(ML)L general secretary said.

The BJP's own house is divided over the issue of providing reservation to women, he asserted, alleging that several saffron leaders and RSS functionaries were opposed to it when it was brought earlier.

“Women's reservation is meant to correct the acute underrepresentation of women in the legislative arena. We do not have to wait for another census and delimitation to assess and address the problem. If we talk about the reservation of women in Parliamentary democracy, it should also be implemented in Rajya Sabha and state Legislative Councils,” he said.

Before the Bill was tabled, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the government was introducing the Constitutional Amendment Bill to increase the representation of women in legislatures, but it is actually “a bill to befool women ahead of the 2024 polls”.

Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal introduced the Constitution amendment bill, Narishakti Vandan Adhiniyam-2023, which seeks to reserve 33 per cent seats in Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women, in Lok Sabha on Wednesday. According to the bill, it will come into effect after the delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies which will be carried out after the completion of the next population census.