top of page

A Political Stunt – Women Reservation Bill




Somitra Vardhan Dubey, Dharmashastra National Law University

The Supreme Court received a PIL from the National Federation of Indian Women in 2021. 1In the Lok Sabha as well as legislative assemblies, 33 percent of the seats should be reserved for women, according to the plea. For two years, the administration did not submit a response. The Union has received criticism from the Court on two occasions this year for failing to respond to a problem that "concerns all of us."

33 percent of the population was intended to be reserved by the 81st Constitutional Amendments Bill. On September 12, 1996, a brief discussion of the Bill that lasted 10 minutes degenerated into a protracted argument. Male MPs questioned whether reservations could bring in "enough capable women." Others contested the law because it did not allocate quotas for women from lower-caste communities. For a start-up period of 15 years, an immediate implementation was advised by a joint committee.

However, as it did a further four times from 1998 and 2003, the law expired. The bill was initially introduced by the Rajya Sabha by the UPA administration in 2008. Yet another report would be presented by a permanent committee. The Lok Sabha was dissolved in 2014, which caused the bill to expire once more.

After a protracted process of proposing, scuttling, lingering, and advocating, it is finally here. So came the 128th Constitutional Amendment aka Women’s Reservation Bill also ‘aka’ Nari Shakti Vandan Abhinandan.

Comments


Indian Journal of Law and Legal Research

Abbreviation: IJLLR

ISSN: 2582-8878

Website: www.ijllr.com

Accessibility: Open Access

License: Creative Commons 4.0

Submit Manuscript: Click here

Open Access Logo

Licensing:

​All research articles published in The Indian Journal of Law and Legal Research are fully open access. i.e. immediately freely available to read, download and share. Articles are published under the terms of a Creative Commons license which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Disclaimer:

The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the IJLLR or its members. The designations employed in this publication and the presentation of material therein do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the IJLLR.

bottom of page