New Delhi, April 17
Senior Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader and Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal today said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was repeatedly changing the goal post on women reservation and decried that the delimitation exercise was being conducted in the garb of the Women Reservation Bill.
Speaking on the Bill in parliament, the Bathinda MP said the SAD supported the Women 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 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 Dr Gagandeep Singh Randhawa”.
Harsimrat 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 now a new amended Bill was being introduced without need for a census. “It is clear delimitation is being done under the cover of the Women Reservation Bill,” she added.
Asserting that the country was seeing how the Bill was being bull dozed in parliament through brute majority, Harsimrat 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 which gave women their right in the real sense of the word. She also stressed how the Women 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 while talking to newsmen outside parliament, Harsimrat said the farmers of Punjab were suffering due to the wrong policies of both the central as well as 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 is arriving in Mandis since the last fifteen days”. She said the AAP government had earlier also failed 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.
