New Delhi, April 15
Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi today said that the Congress will not allow the Women Reservation Bill to be implemented on the basis of the 2011 census as there is no data on backward communities in it.
“Congress party unequivocally supports Women’s Reservation. Parliament unanimously passed the bill in 2023, it is already part of our Constitution”, he said, adding, “what the government is proposing now has nothing to do with women’s reservation. This amendment is an attempted power grab using delimitation and gerrymandering”.
“We will not allow ‘Hissa Chori’ from OBC, Dalit and Adivasi communities by ignoring the caste census data. We will also not allow Southern, North Eastern, North Western and smaller states to be treated unfairly”, Gandhi warned.
In a video message ahead of the special session of the Parliament, Gandhi said, Congress has always supported the Women’s Reservation, citing his own letter to the Prime Minister written in 2018 when he had demanded its implementation from 2019 General Elections.
Gandhi also quoted Congress Parliamentary Party Chairperson Smt Sonia Gandhi’s speech in the parliament in 2023 supporting the Women Reservation Bill. He said the Congress had at that time also demanded that the bill be implemented from the 2024 General Elections.
Gandhi remarked that it was an extreme act of dishonesty by Prime Minister Modi to rely on the 2011 census data, as that census contained no data on OBCs and would effectively deny them their rightful share.
Gandhi noted that the Prime Minister, the RSS and the BJP were scared as the real data about the actual number of the OBCs had started coming. “They are not only against the OBCs, but this act in itself is anti-national”, he warned against excluding the OBCs from the women reservation benefits. He said, their population is 50 percent and they must be given their proportionate share. But, he added, the Prime Minister was trying to snatch their rights.
Terming the proposed delimitation as an “anti-national” act, he said, the southern, the North Eastern and smaller states will be massively at a loss with it, if it is implemented the way Modi wants to implement it. “I believe it is anti-national”, he asserted.
Gandhi said, if the government wanted to implement women’s reservation, the law is already there as it has been passed in 2023. He urged the government to base its implementation on 2026 census and not on the 2011 census, as there is no OBC data in the latter.
Reiterating that Prime Minister Modi was scared of the Epstein files, which were still pending and whose key was with US President Donald Trump, Gandhi said the PM cannot be allowed to carry out the delimitation the way he wants and increase the number of seats according to his own wishes. “We will not allow you to do that”, he told the Prime Minister in clear and categorical terms.
