The government's move to bring about the much-debated law mandating 33 per cent seats for women in Lok Sabha and State Assemblies could be path-breaking. It's a giant leap towards women's empowerment. However, given the ground realities and the long winding road ahead for this legislation to take effect once passed in Parliament, it throws many tricky questions.
The draft bill states that quotas shall come into effect after the delimitation exercise and the first Census taken after the Constitution amendment bill 2023 is notified. The delimitation process will rely on the first Census conducted after 2026. The practicality of quotas taking effect at the 2029 Lok Sabha elections would be bleak and largely depend on whether the government expedites the census and delimitation processes. The last Census was held in February 2011.
The government, no doubt, has taken the Opposition by surprise by conceding to their demand for women's reservation. But the hurry and initial secrecy that went along baffled onlookers and only showed the ugly politics played in the name of women's empowerment. The reality is that reservation can only take effect in the parliamentary elections in 2029 at the earliest after the Census and after the complex delimitation exercises are concluded. The question then: What was this hurry all about?
Congress parliamentary party chief Sonia Gandhi demanded that the quota be implemented immediately, and SC, ST and OBC women also be given reservation following a caste census. She stated that any delay in bringing the reservation into effect would be a gross injustice to Indian women.
The question here is if there is a way out to implement quotas immediately, as suggested by Gandhi, why could it not be done for STs in Goa who have been rightfully demanding reservations which have been notified? Why should there be different yardsticks?
Coming to Goa, the reservation will have a massive impact on the State's political landscape, with 13 seats allocated to women. Here, the State government's wizardry at delimitation is expected to be at work. Hypothetically, applying the quotas in the current set-up would mean the BJP will have to squander its advantage in some constituencies and bench MLAs from women-dominated areas. The bright side is that Goa could see many new faces, and wives and kins of the existing crop could eventually make their way up. The dynamics of ground-level politics will be shaken up to a great extent, and a change may finally be seen.
If we may recall, in the 2022 assembly elections, there were only 26 women candidates contesting in 15 constituencies, while 25 of the 40 constituencies had no women in the fray. Interestingly, 8 out of the 26 women candidates were relatives of legislators. This equation is expected to drastically change by the time the quotas are implemented.
The central government has played a political masterstroke in the name of women's empowerment. It has successfully sold a long-term dream to achieve an immediate goal. The poll vault done with quotas is another conscious and calculated move to draw traction from a sizeable number of women voters across India. In this context, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has gone one-up in the fierce mind game between the NDA and the INDIA bloc.
