Derek O'Brien Probing Why Women Empowerment is not included in Budget Agenda

By: WE Staff | Monday, 4 April 2022

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) is anticipated to file a motion in the Rajya Sabha in the last week of the current budget session for the long-awaited Women's Reservation Bill, which seeks a 33 percent quota for women in Parliament and state legislatures.

The TMC's support for the proposed legislation is considered as a political move by the party, which is led by India's lone female chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, and has 34% female MPs in its parliamentary team.

Derek O'Brien, the party's Rajya Sabha floor leader, has filed a notice under Rule 168 of the Rajya Sabha, requesting that a motion be tabled in the House as soon as feasible.

The notice said, “India has slipped 28 places to rank 140th among 156 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021 primarily on account of the significant decline in the share of women among ministers, which halved, from 23% in 2019 to 9.1% in 2021. The share currently stands at 14%.” 

It added that India's position in the Inter-Parliamentary Union's Women in National Parliaments Rankings has continuously declined over the years. India was ranked 95th in 1998. India is ranked 144th out of 184 countries as of March 2022.

O'Brien probed, “The Union government has its own priorities. It wants to push criminal identification bill and MCD (municipal corporations of Delhi) legislation. We are asking them, why women empowerment is not on their agenda?”

Women make up 15% of MPs in the Lok Sabha and 12.2 percent in the Rajya Sabha. This is lower than the global average of 25.5 percent, according to O'Brien, and only 8% of all MLAs in India are women across all states.

O’Brien further said, “Only 8% of the total MLAs are women across all States in India. At the beginning of the previous Lok Sabha, the President had said, ‘My government recognizes the important role our women play in the development of our society and growth of the nation. It is committed to providing 33% reservation to them in Parliament and State legislative assemblies,’”.

The United Front administration originally submitted the draught law in Lok Sabha in 1996, with the goal of reserving one-third of all seats in the Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies for women. In 1998, 1999, and 2008, similar versions of it were released. The bill came the closest to becoming law in 2010, when the Rajya Sabha approved it.

It was sent to the Lok Sabha, but the UPA administration was unable to pass it before the lower house was dissolved due to a lack of agreement among its partners.