Another shot at women bill

The Women’s Reservation Bill will in all probability be taken up in the Lok Sabha in the first leg of the budget session. “It is a high-priority bill for the government,” Pawan Kumar Bansal, parliamentary affairs minister said this evening. The constitutional amendment was passed by the Rajya Sabha last year after the use of force by marshals against dissenting Opposition members of the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). It was hanging fire in the lower House because the BJP made it clear that unless the government took each and every party on board, it was politically “unwise and untenable” to force its passage. The BJP’s caution also stemmed from the fact that its own backward-caste MPs, who make up one-third of its Lok Sabha strength, warned the leaders that they might defy the party whip and vote against the proposed reservation law. Government sources admitted that the move to bring in the bill might end up as a “token” gesture to mark Women’s Day on March 8 despite the BJP and the Left officially declaring support for it. “Privately the BJP has conveyed that its support will be conditional to keeping the House in extreme order. In any case it cannot be taken up unless we have the backing of all the parties since it is a constitutional amendment bill,” a source said. Getting such a bill through will require the support of two-thirds of the members present and voting and a minimum presence of 50 per cent of the strength of the House. While the government’s representatives did not mention their proposal to take up the bill for consideration and passage when the Lok Sabha’s business advisory committee met this afternoon, an official source said: “We will endeavour to arrive at some agreement with the parties. We will step up our efforts again.” Opposition sources said they had not yet been sounded out about the government’s intent. The battle lines on a gender quota have been etched in stone because the usual suspects opposing it, like the Samajwadi Party and RJD, were unlikely to budge from their positions. Government sources conceded that because the passage of the general budget was uppermost in their minds, they might not “go beyond a point” to ram through the women’s bill. A Samajwadi leader remarked: “It seems like a convenient diversionary ploy to take away attention from the UPA’s scams and try and split the Opposition.”