NEW DELHI: Congress president Rahul Gandhi has said he will ensure that up to 50% women are accommodated in the Congress, proportionate to the population of women in India in the coming years. Addressing the Mahila Adhikar Sammelan organised by Mahila Congress, the party’s women’s arm, Rahul also said Congress will pass and implement the Women’s Reservation Bill when the party returns to power.

The Congress president said his party had extended complete support to the government for the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill, but that the government was now silent on the issue, and appeared unwilling to give women the space in politics they deserved.

Making a case of BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi being anti-women not only on account of their studied “silence” on incidents of rape and sexual assault on minor girls in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh , but also for belonging to an organisation — the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — which was “purely male chavinistic”, Rahul said, “You all heard about the PM launching the “beti bachao, beti padhao” campaign. We didn’t know who we have to ‘save’ our daughters from; it was actually for saving our daughters from BJP MLAs.”

The Congress president also unveiled a logo and flag for Mahila Congress, and said the BJP-RSS would never give women the space they deserved, or the leadership positions than Congress would. “The PM talked about changing India, had talked about 70 years.. But what they (BJP) have done against women in the last four years did not happen in the last 3,000 years,” Rahul said.

Women across the country are scared, he said, adding that the PM had no answer to the question of why women are unsafe in India.

Rahul also promised to bring women to the forefront of the party in framing policy, manifesto and strengthening the organisation, while expressing confidence that the Congress and opposition parties will fight the ideology of the BJP jointly and unseat it in 2019.

