BJP repeatedly changing stand on women's reservation, Akali MP informs Lok Sabha

New Delhi, April 17 Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader and Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Friday said in the Lok Sabha that the BJP was repeatedly changing the goal post on women's reservation and decried that the delimitation exercise was being conducted in the garb of the Women's Reservation Bill.

Speaking on the Bill, she said SAD supported the Women's Reservation Bill but could not support the unconstitutional delimitation exercise. “The Constitution is clear that delimitation can only be conducted after a census. Delimitation itself should be done in such a manner that there is a proportionate increase in Lok Sabha seats of all states to ensure equal representation to all in a federal democracy.”

Speaking about the verbal assurance given by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on proportionate representation, Harsimrat Badal said, “The government should give a written assurance. We all know the fate of verbal assurances given to Punjab on handing over Chandigarh to it in 1986, promise to release the ‘Bandi Singhs’ and lately assurance to hold a CBI probe into the suicide of Punjab Warehousing officer Gagandeep Singh Randhawa”.

Harsimrat Badal highlighted how the central government had called a session in September 2023 but did not implement 33 per cent reservation for women, asserting that the same could be done after conducting a census and delimitation exercise. She said that a new amended Bill was now being introduced without the need for a census. “It is clear delimitation is being done under the cover of the Women's Reservation Bill."

Asserting that the country was seeing how the Bill was being bulldozed in Parliament through brute majority, she said: “The Centre could have conducted the census in the last three years but did not”. She called upon the government to list its objectives clearly in the Bill, as there was no clarity on the basis on which Lok Sabha seats were being increased.

Charging the government with preventing the implementation of 33 per cent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha, the Bathinda MP said: “Women are remembered only before elections and big promises are made to them in the name of Nari Shakti”. She called for making a transparent law that gives women their rights in the real sense of the word.

She also stressed how the Women's Reservation Bill was part of the election manifesto of the BJP in the 2014 and 2019 parliamentary elections, but did not see the light of day till the eve of the 2024 elections, with the sole view of wooing the women electorate. Later, talking to the media, Harsimrat Badal said the farmers of Punjab were suffering due to the wrong policies of both the central and the Aam Aadmi Party government in the state.

She said the Centre had promised to double the income of farmers, but no concrete steps had been taken in this regard. “The AAP government promised to give MSP on all crops but is failing to even procure the wheat crop, which has been arriving in mandis for the last 15 days”.

The Akali Dal MP said the AAP government had earlier also promised to give compensation for widespread destruction of the paddy crop in floods last year, as well as damage due to rain and hailstorms three weeks back, but failed on both fronts.

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