Rahul Gandhi on 16th of July wrote to Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, requesting him to ensure that the Women Reservation Bill will be sanctioned by the parliament in the upcoming session (the monsoon session) which begins on 18th of July.
The Women’s Reservation Bill is a lapsed bill in the Parliament which proposed to amend the constitution to reserve 33% of all seats for women in the Lok Sabha and in all state legislative bodies. The seats were proposed to be reserved in a rotation and would have been determined by ‘draw of lots’ in such a way that ‘a seat would be reserved only once in three consecutive general elections’.
The President of the Indian National Congress wrote that the center had their full support if they re-initiate the bill in the parliament. He stated in his letter that the time to change has come and they must take up their rightful place in the parliament and state legislative bodies.
“Mr. Prime Minister, in many of your public rallies you have spoken about your passion for empowering women and involving them more meaningfully in public life. What better way to demonstrate your commitment to the cause of women than by offering your unconditional support to the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill?” read an excerpt from the letter.
The bill had lapsed in the year 2014. Last year, Sonia Gandhi had written a letter to PM Modi urging him to pass the bill in the Lok Sabha with his party’s majority.
“What better way to demonstrate your commitment to the cause of women, than by offering your unconditional support to the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill? And what better time, than the upcoming session of Parliament? Any further delay will make it impossible to implement before the next general elections,” he added in the letter.
The Congress has gathered over 3.2 million signatures of several Indians approving the passage of such a bill and said that he will be submitting the same to him while seeking the support of Narendra Modi.