Siddhartha Kumar
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:37:38 -0800
http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3688176
08/03/2010 Yadavs torpedo Women’s Bill, upset Sonia’s dream New Delhi: The celebrations of International Women’s Day went awry and horribly wrong for Sonia Gandhi and the Congress when the 14-year-old Women’s Reservation Bill failed to sail through the Rajya Sabha on Monday. Just a day before, Sonia had told her partymen that she was determined to get the Bill passed for two reasons: to fulfill Rajiv Gandhi’s dream and a fitting tribute to the day. Both of that did not happen, leaving the Congress red-faced. A TV grab shows Mohammad Hamid Ansari surrounded by falling pieces of paper - ripped by Members of Parliament - during a debate of The Women's Reservation Bill on Monday. Photo Courtesy: AFP But poor floor management of the Congress Party, its lack of communication with the Opposition parties and utter confusion led to a flock of Yadavs' men thumbing their nose at the Bill. Going a step further, few MPs belonging to Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD and Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party put the Parliament and democracy to shame when they tore the Bill and attacked Hamid Ansari, the Vice President and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. A confused Congress sent mixed and contradictory signals when things started slipping out of hand in a day of fast developments. The Bill was pushed and shoved for introduction from one time slot to another till a war weary Congress gave up at dusk, postponing the introduction of the Bill to Tuesday. Initially, the Congress, armed with brute support in the Rajya Sabha, thought it could push the Bill. But realising that the Chair could not ask disrupters to leave the House when a Constitutional Bill was to be debated, the Congress went into a huddle at Sonia Gandhi's 10 Janpath. The deadlock put the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the defensive as the two regional parties - the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal with their support base in the Hindi heartland - threatened to withdraw support to the government accusing it of trampling on the interests of "women belonging to minorities, Dalits and backward class". The support withdrawal will not result in the fall of the government but will make its majority slim in the 543-member Lok Sabha, especially when the crucial Finance Bill is set to come up. The proposed legislation to reserve 33.3 per cent seats in Parliament and state legislatures for women was drafted by the United Front Government, headed by H D Deve Gowda, and tabled in Parliament for the first time on September 12, 1996. It was referred to a parliamentary panel headed by the late Left leader Geeta Mukherjee. Though it has been introduced in Parliament several times since then, the Bill could not be passed. When Gowda's successor I K Gujral sought to introduce it in 1997, he was shouted down by members of his own party, the undivided Janata Dal. In 1999, when the then law minister Ram Jethamalani sought to table the Bill during the NDA government's tenure, an RJD minister snatched the papers from his hands. So, in 2008, when law minister H R Bhardwaj introduced the Bill in the Rajya Sabha, he was guarded by Congress ministers like V Narayansamy and Renuka Chaudhary to ensure that the incident was not repeated. The Bill provides for reservation for women at each level of legislative decision-making, starting with the Lok Sabha to state and local legislatures. If the Bill is passed, one-third of the total available seats would be reserved for women in national, state or local governments. In continuation of the existing provisions already mandating reservations for scheduled caste and scheduled tribes, one-third of such SC and ST candidates must be women. The historic bill, first introduced in 1996 that promises to reserve 33 percent of legislative seats for women in the country was moved in the Rajya Sabha amid unruly scenes as a dozen members opposing it tore up the document and hurled the pieces at chairman Hamid Ansari before forcing a fifth adjournment of the day. This happened on a day when both Houses assembled to the call to "celebrate and honour women" and include them in the decision making process to mark Women's Day being observed worldwide. The controversial bill - for which the ruling United Progress Alliance (UPA) has support of numbers from the opposition Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Communists but opposition from the northern regional parties - faced repeated opposition in the two houses, though it was taken up for consideration only in the Rajya Sabha Monday. The bill is now expected to be taken up for vote Tuesday amid reports that Manmohan Singh has called an all-party meeting to arrive at a possible consensus. The government seems to have been caught completely unprepared by Monday's turn of events as a huge buzz had been created in the media and outside over the imminent passage of the bill that was trumpeted as one of the signal acts of the government. The bill, if it became law, promised to politically empower women in a way that few countries could boast of and one that would have radically transformed the way politics was practised. But the anti-bill lobby, headed by the Yadav chieftains, Mulayam Singh Yadav of the SP and Lalu Prasad (Yadav) of the RJD, both former chief ministers, had come well prepared as they mounted not just vocal but physical opposition to the bill while threatening not just withdrawal of support to the government but "political war" if the government went ahead with it. POLITICAL DACOITY "We will use our democratic rights fully whatever the consequences. This is a political dacoity. It won't be tolerated," Lalu Prasad thundered to reporters. The Janata Dal-United (JD-U) is split over the support to the bill with a section loyal to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar signalliing its intention to back the legislation. With the fate of the bill appearing to hang in the balance and questions being asked if the government had got cold feet over it, Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily assured in the evening: "We have a majority of 200 and we could have passed the bill. But a bill of this nature, which will have a historical importance and have important implications and seeks constitution amendment cannot be bulldozed. "We need a healthy debate. It is listed for consideration tomorrow (Tuesday). There was a lot of 'hungama' (ruckus) today which was totally uncalled for," he told reporters after the Rajya Sabha was adjourned. The Congress slammed a "handful" of opposition members for their "churlish" attempts to derail the bill but said the government was determined to pass it. "The present reservation bill is a subject where the only question is when and not if. It's an idea whose time has come and the inevitable cannot be postponed," he added. "Despite all the churlish attempts to the contrary, something which would and will make India, the Indian womanhood and Indian democracy proud, is being turned by a bare handful of persons into the shame of democracy," spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said. Both the BJP and Communists have promised support but criticised the government on floor management and for not anticipating the nature of the opposition. Brinda Karat, leader of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, said the government should have ensured the house chairman's dignity and said "there were enough women MPs who could have circled and protected the chairman if the government had only planned in time." The bill has otherwise found wide support from India's diverse social and intellectual spectrum. The Centre for Social Research (CSR), an activist group, has even begun the process of selecting 1,000 women from across India and grooming them to contest elections in anticipation of the legislation. Source: India Syndicate and IANS ------------------------------------ ---- INFORMATION OVERLOAD? Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to zestmedia-dig...@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/ PARTICIPATE:- On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:- If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to zestcaste-subscr...@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/ Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: zestcaste-dig...@yahoogroups.com zestcaste-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: zestcaste-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/