Patna: Bihar chief minister Samrat Choudhary on Sunday lashed out at the opposition for non-passage of the Constitution (131st amendment) Bill and claimed that the opposition’s actions amounted to betraying women.
Addressing a press conference along with other leaders of the NDA’s allies in Bihar at the state BJP headquarters, Choudhary said that the defeat of the bill in Lok Sabha was a “black day”. He while sharpening his attack on the opposition parties including the RJD and Congress asserted that the defeat of the bill in the house exposed their “anti-women" face.
CM claimed that RJD chief Lalu Prasad had a history of orchestrating the tearing up of bills in the past. He said that the opposition had no objection to Rahul Gandhi's sister becoming an MP but it was opposed to a daughter from a poor or underprivileged background entering the Parliament. “By opposing the bill, they have laid bare this very mindset,” he remarked.
"Had the women's reservation Bill been passed, the number of women representatives in the Bihar assembly would have risen from 29 to at least 122. Similarly, in the parliament, the total number of seats would have increased to 816, with 216 of those seats being reserved for women," he noted. “Even when the country's population stood at 70 crore, the Lok Sabha comprised 543 seats, now when the population has surged to 140 crore, the number of seats remains unchanged,” he observed.
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CM stated that the NDA government in Bihar made a provision for 50 percent reservation for women in panchayats and urban local bodies in 2006. As a result, the number of elected women representatives within Bihar's Panchayati Raj system and urban local bodies has now exceeded 59 percent. He further noted that whether it was the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations or the decision to grant 10 percent reservation to the upper castes, all these initiatives were undertaken by the NDA government.
Meanwhile, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav alleged that Samrat might have become the CM but he lacked even a basic understanding of the bill. “Under the guise of women's reservation, the ruling dispensation is attempting to reap political dividends through the process of delimitation,” he claimed, asking why the bill had not yet been implemented even when it was passed three years ago and also why the President's assent was not secured during that period.
