Akhilesh Yadav said quotas should be a balance between gender justice and social justice. (file)
New Delhi:
Soon after the women’s reservation bill was introduced by the Center in the Lok Sabha, Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, whose party has been a fierce critic of the bill in its current form since its introduction 27 years ago, said that quota must be balanced. of gender justice and social justice. Referring to PDA – Pichde, Dalit, Alpasankhyak (Backward Classes, Dalits, Minorities), his formula to defeat the ruling BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls – he said reservations for this should be clearly in some percentage form.
I think I did a good job. I think I did a good job
Phone, phone, phone, PDA (PDA) I think I did it right I think it’s right— Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) September 19, 2023
Amid speculation about the reaction of INDIA bloc parties opposing the bill, Rajya Sabha MP Ram Gopal Yadav, general secretary of Akhilesh Yadav’s party, told NDTV that they will provide support to the bill, but will also put forward their point of view.
“We have never been against women’s reservation, but our objection was over the current form of the bill. We have been demanding from the beginning that there should be reservation for OBC women depending on their population. Members of the majority party, the BJP, and their colleagues, among many others, are not in favor of OBC women. Our party will support the bill, but we will also try to provide reservation for OBC women in the future. I am sure that one day the number of people who belong to the The view that OBC women should be given reservation will be a majority in this House, and we will do so,” he said.
The Samajwadi Party leaders, along with others from Lalu Yadav’s RJD and Sharad Yadav, who once headed the JD(U), had tried on several occasions to disrupt the passage of the bill, the source said storming the house and even attempting to seize the copy of the bill as it was being introduced.
In 2008, when the bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha, Samajwadi Party member Abu Asim Azmi and his party colleagues had tried to wrest the bill from the then law minister Hansaraj Bhardwaj.
Akhilesh Yadav’s father and party patriarch, late Mulayam Singh Yadav, had courted controversy at least twice for his comments on how the reservation would only benefit affluent women.
When asked in 2012 about his demand for a quota within the quota, he noted: “…bade ghar ki ladkiya aur mahilayen ko fayda milega… humari gaon ki gareeb mahilayon ko nahin… akarshak nahi hoti…bas itna kahunga… jyada nahi… (The Women Reservation Bill in its current form would benefit only rich and urban women… our poor and rural women are not attractive… won’t say further).”
Two years earlier, when the bill was presented for approval in the Rajya Sabha in March 2010, he said, “The women’s reservation bill, if passed in its current form, would encourage young men to whistle in Parliament.”
