The Women’s Reservation Bill – Nari Shakti Vahan Adhiniyam 2023 – cleared the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. The Bill seeks to reserve 33 per cent of all seats for women in Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies. The Bill will now go through the Rajya Sabha test on Thursday.

The bill was passed through a voice vote with the support of 454 MPs. Only two MPs votes against the Bill. The Women’s Reservation Bill also became the first Bill to be cleared by the lower house of the new Parliament building.

If cleared by Rajya Sabha, the Women’s Reservation Bill will become a law and provide 33 per cent of reservation to women in Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies. However, the implementation of the 33 per cent quota to women is likely to take a few more years.

The implementation of the provisions of the Bill will only be possible after a Census and delimitation exercise to redraw the constituencies. The process is likely to take at least 4 more years.

However, Union Minister Amit Shah said that both the Census and delimitation process would start soon after the next general elections.

Congress seeks to take credit

Earlier, Congress Parliamentary Party Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, while opening the debate, said that Bill will fulfill her late husband and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s dream.

She said that former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had brought in a constitutional amendment to increase women’s representation in local body election.

“It was defeated in Rajya Sabha by 7 votes. Later, Congress Govt, under the leadership of PM PV Narasimha Rao, passed it in Rajya Sabha. As a result, we have 15 lakh elected women leaders across the country through local bodies. Rajiv Gandhi’s dream is only partially complete. It will complete with the passing of this Bill”, Sonia Gandhi told the Lok Sabha,” she added.

‘Success has many fathers’: BJP counters

Countering the Congress leader’s claim, BJP’s firebrand leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani took a dig at Sonia Gandhi and said that success has many fathers while failure has none.

“…when the bill came, some people called it ‘our bill’, some people said they wrote letters on it, some people said they set the entire constitutional framework. Today a respectable women leader gave her speech in the Lok Sabha.”

“I want to thank her for clarifying two things. We are always told that one special family is to be credited for the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution. But today she clarified in Parliament that this work was done by PV Narasimha Rao on whose death his body was not allowed in the party headquarters,” Smriti Irani said.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced the bill in the Lok Sabha and said that while several governments tried to bring the women’s quota but failed to get it cleared from the Parliament, the god gave him the opportunity to take that forward. With support from most of the Opposition parties and enough numbers in the Rajya Sabha, the bill is likely to become a law Today.