The Jammu and Kashmir Congress unit has slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party for politicising the Women’s Reservation Bill, calling it a blatant and desperate assault on democracy under the guise of women’s empowerment. The party said that women’s rights cannot be reduced to mere campaign rhetoric or used to justify institutional manipulation.
Congress spokesperson Namrta Sharma said the failure to pass the bill is a setback to the BJP’s attempt to weaponise women’s rights to push through a politically motivated restructuring of the Indian electoral framework.
The strong remarks came after the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill to implement a 33 per cent reservation for women in the legislatures from 2029, with an increase in the number of Lok Sabha seats to 816, was defeated in the lower house on Friday.
During a media interaction here, Sharma said, “The Congress has always supported women’s reservation and continues to firmly back the 33 per cent quota for women in legislative bodies.
When the 2023 law was passed, the entire opposition supported women’s reservation, reflecting a rare and clear national consensus on the issue.”
Despite the consensus, the BJP deliberately attempted to dilute the framework by linking its implementation to census and delimitation, effectively converting an immediate constitutional commitment into an “uncertain and deferred” promise.
Accusing the BJP of a “blatant and desperate assault” on democracy under the “guise” of women’s empowerment, the senior Congress leader said, “This was not about granting rights (to women) but about postponing them, ensuring that women’s reservation remains a political slogan rather than a realised constitutional guarantee.
The attempt has exposed the BJP’s real intent — not to implement reservation, but to fundamentally alter the structure of parliamentary representation to its advantage.”
She went on to criticise the ruling party at the Centre saying, “Congress will not allow women’s rights to be reduced to campaign rhetoric or used as a cover for institutional manipulation.”
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