It was Rahul Gandhi who in a letter in 2018 had urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help pass the Women's Reservation Bill, Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi reminded the Lok Sabha during a discussion on the bill on Thursday.
The Opposition argues that while the Bill was passed unanimously in parliament in 2023 with support from all parties, the government has failed to operationalise it.
"In 2018, Rahul Gandhi wrote a letter to Modi ji stating that the reservation for women should be implemented by 2019," Priyanka Gandhi said, adding that the "PM may mock Rahul Gandhi but he does pay heed to his words" as today we are discussing the very same issue.
The Congress, Priyanka Gandhi again reminded, also pushed for the Bill's passage in 2010 under the UPA government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
"In 2010, under the Prime Ministership of Manmohan Singh, the Congress again pushed for the Women's quota bill passage. It cleared the Rajya Sabha but a consensus could not be built in the Lok Sabha," Priyanka Gandhi said.
The Congress MP also narrated a background to the issue of women's reservation in legislative bodies.
"This issue is close to the heart of every woman. There is a background to this issue. The prime minister said this issue was blocked for 30 years. This was started by a person called Nehru. Not the Nehru they avoid so much but Motilal Nehru, who as the president of a committee prepared a list of 19 rights which were then passed as a resolution at the 1931 Karachi session of the Congress and formed the basis of giving women equal rights in Indian politics," she said.
She said it was Rajiv Gandhi who, as the prime minister, brought a bill for women's reservation in panchayats and nagarpalikas and finally, the bill for it was passed during the PV Narasimha Rao government of the Congress.
Priyanka Gandhi said the Congress supported the passage of Women's Reservation Bill in 2023 and supports it today as well.
"In 2023, when this law was passed, the Congress supported it and today also, the Congress is strongly in support of women's reservation. But the truth is that the debate is not on women's reservation. The bill that the government has brought has changed the direction of the debate," Priyanka Gandhi said and hit out at the BJP over the delimitation provisions in the bill.
The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill to tweak the women's-quota law was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Thursday after a division of votes.
Two ordinary bills -- the Delimitation Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill to implement the proposed amended women's-quota law in the Union territories of Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir -- were also introduced in the House.
