New Delhi:
The Union Cabinet on Monday approved the Women Reservation Bill, sources said. The Union Cabinet met this evening after the first session of the five-day special session of Parliament.
Sources said several BJP ministers and MPs have been asked to take women voters to Parliament in the coming days. BJP president JP Nadda met many of them on Monday.
Several leaders have demanded the introduction of the Women’s Reservation Act, which will guarantee a 33 percent quota in Lok Sabha and state assemblies. The Congress also passed a resolution in this regard during the meeting of the Hyderabad Congress Working Committee on Sunday.
All about the Women’s Reservation Bill:
- The women reservation bill seeks to reserve a 33 percent quota in Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
- One-third of the seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will be reserved for women from those groups. These reserved seats can be allotted to different constituencies in the state or union territory on a rotation basis.
- The last concrete development in this regard took place in 2010, when Rajya Sabha passed the bill, while marshals escorted some MPs who opposed the bill, but the bill lapsed as it could not be passed by Lok Sabha.
- In the current Lok Sabha, 78 women members were elected, representing less than 15 percent of the total strength of 543. In Rajya Sabha too, women’s representation is around 14 percent, according to the data shared by the government with Parliament last time. December.
- Several state assemblies have less than 10 percent women representation, including Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Odisha, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura and Puducherry .
- Bihar, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttrakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi had 10-12 percent women MLAs, as per the government data as of December 2022. Chattisgarh, West Bengal and Jharkhand topped the charts with 14.44 percent, 13.7 percent and 12.35 percent women MLAs respectively.