Kakoli dares BJP to raise women's quota to40 per cent; Mahua calls Bill a ‘sham’

PTI, New Delhi, Sep 20, 2023 : Trinamool Congress member Kakoli Ghosh-Dastidar on Wednesday invoked famous song ‘catch me if you can’ dedicated to legendary boxer Muhammad Ali to dare the BJP to match the 40 per cent reservation for women already implemented by her party for Lok Sabha elections.

“Catch me if you can, all of the political parties here, catch Mamata Banerjee and AITC (All India Trinamool Congress) and make it 40 per cent and not 33 per cent,” she said, while participating in the discussion on the women’s reservation bill in the Lok Sabha.

Ghosh-Dastidar said she was referring to the popular song dedicated to legendary boxer Cassius Clay, who changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

She was referring to TMC chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee putting up 40 per cent women candidates in the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state during the 2019 general elections.

Ghosh-Dastidar said even in the West Bengal government, Banerjee has allocated important portfolios such as health, law, women’s empowerment and industry that were held by women legislators.

“We in Trinamool Congress get that much respect for being here (in the Lok Sabha) in great numbers,” she said.

The NDA government on Tuesday introduced a constitutional amendment bill to reserve one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women, reviving a bill pending for 27 years for want of consensus among parties.

The Trinamool leader also quoted poems by Kazi Nazrul Islam and Rabindranath Tagore. 

Terming the Women's Reservation Bill a "sham", another TMC MP Mahua Moitra on Wednesday said it should be renamed as "Women's Reservation Re- scheduling Bill" and asserted that what was needed was action not the "placebo of legislatively-mandated procrastination". 

Participating in a debate on the Bill in Lok Sabha, Moitra said women's reservation is dependent on two totally "indeterminate dates" and asked, "can there be a greater jumla". 

"It is both my pride and my shame as I stand here in India's Parliament speaking on a women's reservation bill. It is my pride that I belong to the All India Trinamool Congress, a party that sent 37 percent of women among its members to Parliament, but it is my chagrin that I belong to a Lok Sabha that on aggregate has only 15 percent of its people as women, far below the global average of 26.5 percent and also below the Asian regional average of 21 percent," Moitra said.

 

"As this Government pats itself on rankings in various global tables let it also hang its head in dis- grace that same India ranks 140 out of 196 in the Inter- Parliamentary Union tables in women's reservations," she stated. 

The TMC member pointed out that within women Parliamentarians, women and Dalits have been consistently under- represented. In the 17th Lok Sabha, there are only two Muslim women members and both from TMC, she said