Parliament session: Centre likely to introduce bill to reserve 33% seats for women in J&K Assembly

Srinagar: After the passing of women reservation bill by the Parliament in September, the Center is likely to introduce a bill in the upcoming winter session to grant 33 per cent reservation to women in J&K Legislative Assembly.

33 per cent seats will be reserved in the 90-seat Jammu and Kashmir Assembly for the women, sources said. When the provisions of women reservation are made applicable to the Lok Sabha, one or two out of five Parliament seats in J&K will also be reserved for the women.

29 or 30 seats in the Union Territory Assembly will be reserved for women from 2029 when provisions of the legislation will come into effect.

The winter session of the Parliament is scheduled to begin on December 4 and will last till December 22. The bill for providing reservation to women in J&K Assembly is likely to be moved by Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

The ‘Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam’, as the Bill is called, passed by both houses of the Parliament during special session in September 2023 also applies to seats reserved for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the Lok Sabha and the Legislative Assemblies. The seats reserved for women will be rotated after each delimitation exercise.

Nearly half of India’s 950 million registered voters are women but their participation in politics has remained historically low. Just 104 of India's 788 MPs, or slightly more than 13 per cent, were women after the last national election, government figures show. In 20 States and UTs less than 10 per cent MLAs are females.