Women Reservation Bill: All You Need To Know

The Union Cabinet approved the women reservation bill on Monday evening after the first sitting of the five-day Parliament special session.

Last week, the agenda for the session was announced. But women reservation bill was not mentioned in the eight bills which were decided to be discussed and proceeded in the Parliament special session.

• The implementation of the Constitution 108th Amendment Bill,2008 will provide 33 per cent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies.
• The allocation of reserved seats shall be determined by authorities described by Parliament.
• One-third of the seats reserved for Schedules Caste and Scheduled Tribe shall be reserved for women from those groups.
• Reserved seats will be allotted by rotation to different constituencies in the State or Union territory.
• Reservation of seats for women shall cease to exist 15 years after the commencement of this Amendment Act.
• In May 1989, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi first came forward with the idea of women reservation in elected bodies by introducing the Constitution Amendment Bill to provide one-third reservation for women in rural and urban local bodies, but the bill was only passed by Lok Sabha and failed to proceed from Rajya Sabha.
• After several attempt, a concrete development of the issue was in 2010. After some dramatic events displayed by the MPs opposing the move, Rajya Sabha passed the bill with 186-1 votes on March 9.
• But however, the Bill was never taken for consideration in the Lok Sabha and eventually lapsed in 2014 with the dissolution of the Lok Sabha.
• The report examining the 1996 women’s reservation bill recommended that reservation be provided for women of OBCs once the Constitution was amended to allow for reservation for OBCs. It also recommended that reservation be extended to the Rajya Sabha and the Legislative Councils. Neither of these recommendations has been incorporated in the Bill, as per PRS.
• In the present Lok Sabha, out of 542 elected members, 78 are women which account for less than 15 per cent of the total strength.
• Similarly, in Rajya Sabha, women representation is about 14 per cent, that is 24 out of 224 members as per government sources.
• Several state assemblies have less than 10 per cent women representation, including Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Odisha, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura and Puducherry, says NDTV.