By IANS,
New Delhi : The government’s failure to enact legislation reserving 33 percent of seats in parliament and the state legislatures for women was a “matter of great regret”, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Friday.
“That is a matter of great regret. It is a failure, a collective failure of all political parties,” Singh said during his interaction with women journalists here.
He said that if his government came back to power after the general elections, “we will work very sincerely” to bring the bill back on track.”
Manmohan Singh pointed out that the government had deliberately introduced the bill in the Rajya Sabha and not in the Lok Sabha.
“We introduced the bill in the Rajya Sabha deliberately. In the Lok Sabha, if we had introduced it, it would have lapsed with its dissolution,” he said.