Congress plans pan-India campaign to counter BJP, seeks implementation of 33% quota for women within 543 Lok Sabha seats

New Delhi: Countering BJP’s narrative on women’s quota issue, Mahila Congress has designed a protest programme that includes a signature campaign as well as sending postcards to Prime Minister Narendra Modi from across the country to put pressure on the government on implementation of 33% quota within 543 Lok Sabha seats at the earliest.

While programmes like burning BJP in effigy have started in state capitals, the women’s wing is also planning to take the protests to district and block levels. Besides, senior leaders have been tasked to hold Facebook Live to strongly raise the demand for immediate implementation of women’s quota.

Mahila Congress president Alka Lamba said protests have been organised in Delhi and Jaipur in the past two days while more demonstrations are being planned in other states. Rajya Sabha MP and Kerala Mahila Congress president Jebi Mather said a ‘Lok Bhavan’ march is being organised in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday.

The signature and post card campaigns are set to start on Tuesday with an aim to send a message – Implement Women’s Reservation – Do it Today, Do it Now, Include OBC Women in the Reservation – to the Prime Minister.

“The Prime Minister and the BJP are misleading the country. We already have a women’s quota law. We will put pressure on the government to bring a Bill for the immediate implementation of quota for women with OBC reservation in 543 seats in the upcoming Monsoon Session if not before,” Lamba told DH.

She said the government can call an all-party meeting any time after April 29 when the current round of Assembly elections gets over and bring its proposal for implementing women’s quota in existing 543 seats.

Mather said they were still at a loss over the government not agreeing to implement the 33% quota within the existing Lok Sabha numbers. “The BJP-RSS considers women as second class citizens and they don’t want to empower women. That is exactly why a farce was played out,” she said.

She said there was no seriousness in the government on women’s quota and it was evident in the way it conducted consultations and later came to Lok Sabha with the Bill, which did not reflect the genuine demands of women.

The Modi government’s moves did not reflect the genuine intention of giving reservation to women rather get delimitation passed under the garb of women reservation, she said.

“The Prime Minister should not once but 100 times apologise to women for cheating them by not giving their rightful due. He should also apologise for making women a tool or a decoy or a bait to achieve their goal of delimitation,” she added.