The Hindu : National : Manmohan to consult Opposition on women's quota Bill today

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Wednesday, Aug 24, 2005

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Manmohan to consult Opposition on women's quota Bill today

Special Correspondent

Group of Ministers has completed consultations with individual parties

NEW DELHI: The Prime Minister has called a meeting here for Wednesday to consult leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party and all other Opposition parties on the Women's Reservation Bill.

A similar meeting of the United Progressive Alliance and its supporting parties was held on Monday.

Group of Ministers

Over the last two weeks a Group of Ministers comprising Pranab Mukherjee, Shivraj Patil and Ghulam Nabi Azad completed consultations with individual parties.

The consultation process will be completed by Wednesday unless a decision is taken to call an all-party meeting.

There is a view on both sides of the political fence that after this exercise the Government could try to introduce the Bill this session itself and send it to a standing committee, before which a detailed discussion can take place.

As the government proposal to increase the number of Lok Sabha seats to 900 and add 3,000 Assembly seats is comparatively new — the idea was floated earlier but it did not take shape — any Bill on these lines will have to be sent to the standing committee.

If this is done this session, the Bill could be ready for adoption by the winter session. But there seems to be little possibility now of that happening.

"Confine to 10 per cent"

PTI reports from Lucknow:

Demanding that the provision for reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and the Assemblies be reduced to 10 per cent instead of the proposed 33 per cent, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav said on Tuesday that the onus of fielding women candidates from any seat should be left to the parties and not the Election Commission.

``There are glaring deficiencies in the proposed Bill and only women of higher strata will stand to benefit from it,'' the Samajwadi Party president said referring to the Women's Reservation Bill, at a news conference here. ``The provision for reservation of women should be confined to 10 per cent instead of the proposed 33 per cent and the onus of fielding women candidates from any seat should be left to the parties and not the Election Commission,'' Mr. Yadav said.

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