Meet on Women Reservation Bill fails

However, the Speaker said that the efforts to evolve consensus on the Bill that provides 33 per cent reservation to women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies will continue. The speaker also plans to meet both BSP and SP separately to discuss the issue.

“I will call the SP and the BSP separately to discuss the issue. Efforts will continue till consensus is achieved,” Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar told reporters after the meeting. Kumar also informed that she will convene another round of meeting before the monsoon session of the Parliament that has been deferred by two weeks and will start from August 1.

In the meeting to discuss the Bill that has already been passed by the Rajya Sabha, Shiv Sena exhorted that women should get reservation in distribution of tickets while RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad asserted for its demand of “quota within quota” for OBC women.

Ananth Geete, Shiv Sena MP said that instead of providing reservation to women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies, political parties should better be asked to give 33 per cent of party tickets to female candidates to contest elections. However BSP and SP have objections to the present form of the Bill.

However, Congress, the biggest constituent of ruling UPA at the Centre expressed hope to develop consensus in the matter and introduce the Bill during the monsoon session of Parliament.

Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan said that party is “committed” to the Bill and “will try to work out consensus on the issue and hope the Bill is presented before the Parliament in the coming monsoon session”.

Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj extending support to the Bill urged Meira Kumar to develop a consensus on the Bill to avoid unruly scenes witnessed in the Rajya Sabha when the Bill was passed in March last year.

"Members who disagree should be given a chance to put across their views and be allowed to press for amendments and even walkout. In the Rajya Sabha marshals had to be used. But no similar scenes should be repeated in the Lok Sabha," Sushma Swaraj said.

Swaraj was referring to the walkout staged by BSP members from the upper house before the voting on the bill last March and when marshals had to be called in to evict some members from the RJD, SP and JD-U, who created acrimonious scenes in the house while protesting against the Bill.

Women Reservation Bill has the support of the ruling Congress and its coalition partners of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), besides the main opposition BJP and the Left parties. However, the Bill to be brought through constitutional amendment needs a two-third majority to be passed in Lok Sabha.