New Delhi : Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Nabin on Friday chaired a meeting of state unit presidents and key national and state office bearers to draw up the contours of an outreach on the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam or the women’s reservation bill that will be taken up during the upcoming session of Parliament, starting April 16.
The outreach has been planned pan India to shed light on the bill that will pave the way for the implementation of 33% quotas for women in Parliament and state legislatures.
The Union cabinet this week gave its nod to the introduction of two bills the amendment to the Women’s Reservation Act and the bill to set up a delimitation commission for the purpose of carving out new constituencies.
The government has proposed increasing the Lok Sabha seats to 816 from the current 543 of which 272 will be reserved for women.
According to a party functionary, the outreach programme will be rolled out after the bills are cleared in Parliament. “The BJP from the very beginning had been in support of women’s reservation. We already have a reservation policy for women in the organisation and support the move to have more representation to women who make for aadhi abaadi (half of the population)…” the functionary said.
The outreach is intended to outline the BJP’s pro-women policies and administrative interventions such as the Ujjwala Yojna, financial aid to women of a particular financial demographic and Political empowerment through the implementation of quotas, the functionary said.
{{/usCountry}}The outreach is intended to outline the BJP’s pro-women policies and administrative interventions such as the Ujjwala Yojna, financial aid to women of a particular financial demographic and Political empowerment through the implementation of quotas, the functionary said.
{{/usCountry}}Women have emerged as an important vote bank of the party and leaders attribute pro women policies for this support.
The bills will be taken up during the extended Budget session from April 16 to 18. The amendment to the bill seeks to delink the delimitation exercise from the ongoing census and will redraw constituencies on the basis of the 2011 census.
The outreach is on the lines of the campaigns that the party organised to drum up support for bills that were considered contentious such as the Waqf (Amendment) Act that sought to reform the 1995 Act and the VB G Ram G Act, that replaced the flagship rural job scheme MGNREGA.
The outreach comes at a time when the opposition has questioned the timing of tabling the bills amid state polls. With Tamil Nadu and West and Bengal to go to the polls on April 23 and 29, the Congress has alleged it violates fhe model code of conduct.