Centre has canned a move to bring a central legislation to provide 50 per cent quota to women in Panchayati Raj institutions. Centre has canned a move to bring a central legislation to provide 50 per cent quota to women in Panchayati Raj institutions.

Amid reports that the NDA government may revive the Women’s Reservation Bill, for reserving one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies for women, the Centre has canned a move to bring a central legislation to provide 50 per cent quota to women in Panchayati Raj institutions.

Former Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh had, in early 2016, mooted the idea of bringing in a Constitution Amendment Bill to reserve half the seats in all three tiers of rural local bodies — gram panchayats, panchayat samitis and zilla parishads — for women.

However, following resistance, especially from the BJP-ruled state of Uttar Pradesh, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj has decided to leave it to the states to bring in their own legislation. “It is a political matter. Hence we think it is best that the states themselves bring in a law to reserve half the seats for women,” said a source in the ministry.

According to the 73rd and 74th Amendment Act of the Constitution, passed in 1993, one-third of the seats in all rural and urban local bodies are reserved for women.

At the time when Birender Singh proposed the legislation last year, 16 states already had laws in place that reserved half their seats in rural local bodies for women — a few extended the reservation to their urban local bodies too. Since then, four more states have enacted similar laws, the latest being Punjab, which enacted the law in July this year, four months after Congress Chief Minister Amarinder Singh assumed office.

However, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Goa and Jammu and Kashmir, all BJP-ruled, are yet to bring in such a legislation. The five Northeastern states of Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh also have not brought in the legislation.

A ministry official said that some of the Northeastern states had cited the exception granted in Article 243 (M), which says that Part IX of the Constitution (dealing with panchayats) would not apply to them. As for Uttar Pradesh, sources said that Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Minister Narendra Singh Tomar raised the issue with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath during the Panchayati Raj Diwas celebrations in Lucknow in April this year. “The minister has spoken to the CM. It is now up to the state to initiate such a move if it wants to,” said an official.

In the past, Adityanath has taken a stand contrary to the official party line on the issue of women’s reservation. In articles published on his official website and his weekly journal, he has written about how “women power does not require freedom, but protection and channelisation”. He has also said that there is a need to assess the existing one-third reservation in gram sabhas, panchayats and local bodies, “and then decide whether women who are in active politics and public life like men… may not lose their importance and role as mothers, daughters and sisters”.

Speaking to The Indian Express in May 2016, Birender Singh had also proposed that the tenure of reservation for a women candidate should be at least two terms, so that she can work without the fear of losing her seat to a male candidate once the reservation is lifted. Singh, at the same time, admitted that several states had opposed the move.

The Constitution (110th Amendment) Bill, 2009 and the Constitution (112th Amendment) Bill, 2009 to reserve 50 per cent seats in all rural and urban local bodies for women was first introduced by UPA-II. It, however, lapsed with the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha.

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