By IANS,
New Delhi: The Communist Party of India-Marxist Friday demanded the tabling of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the monsoon session of the Lok Sabha beginning Monday.
“There should not be further delay. The Women’s Bill should be tabled in the Lok Sabha with the support of all the parties, which backed the Bill in the Rajya Sabha,” CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat told reporters here .
The Women’s Bill, which seeks to reserve one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies for women, was passed by the Rajya Sabha March 9.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Left parties backed the Bill. However, the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and a section of the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) opposed it while the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Trinamool Congress abstained from voting.
Karat said he wondered why the government was delaying the bill in the Lok Sabha. As protests against the Bill by the SP, RJD and JD-U rocked the Lok Sabha in March, Leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee had said that “wider consultations with all concerned” will be held before tabling the Bill in the lower house.
Karat was giving details of the deliberations of the three-day meeting of the central committee of the party, which concluded here Friday.
He said the party also wanted the government to “place its response” to the recommendations of the Ranganath Mishra Commission report on reservation for minorities in education and jobs during the monsoon session of the parliament.