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Row as women left out of Maha cabinet, Fadnavis assures action
As the controversy raged, deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said women will get appropriate representation in the next round of cabinet expansion
Pune Rights activists have expressed disappointment over the Eknath Shinde government in Maharashtra failing to induct women into the cabinet which was expanded on Tuesday after 41 days.Eighteen MLAs, including state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Chandrakant Patil, were sworn in as cabinet ministers at Raj Bhavan in south Mumbai.The list doesn’t include women, a move being panned by politicians and women’s rights activists.
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MP Supriya Sule said not inducting women shows the “BJP’s mindset”.
“Maharashtra was the first state in the country to give the reservation for women. When 50% of India’s population is women, they are not represented in the state cabinet. This shows the BJP’s mindset,” said Sule.
As the controversy raged, deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said women will get appropriate representation in the next round of cabinet expansion. “The objection that there is no woman minister in the newly-formed cabinet will be addressed soon. Women members will be inducted in the next cabinet expansion for sure. Earlier, people were critical over (the delay) in expanding the cabinet government, now they have come up with something new. Women representatives will get appropriate representation in our cabinet,” Fadnavis said.
He was speaking at an event at Balgandharva auditorium in Pune on Tuesday.
Activist Trupti Desai of Bhumata Brigade, who had spearheaded a protest for women’s entry at the Shani temple in the Ahmednagar district in 2016, expressed disappointment over not a single woman legislator finding a place in the Shinde cabinet.
This is an insult to women in general in the progressive state like Maharashtra, she alleged.
Social activist Kiran Moghe said not inducting women is “shocking”, especially when the country is celebrating 75 years of Independence.
“I wonder that they did not find any capable woman who can be inducted in the cabinet,” Moghe said in Pune. Former bureaucrat and lawyer Abha Singh took a dig at the BJP over women finding no place in the new cabinet. “’Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ is the motto of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP, but they should also make a daughter a minister,” she said.
In the erstwhile Uddhav Thackeray-led tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi government, Varsha Gaikwad, Yashomati Thakur, and Aditi Tatkare had served as ministers.
(with agency inputs)
