Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: When the Constitution amendment bill fell through, there was one basic question in the minds of all — Why did the Modi govt bring a bill it knew would face an unbreachable wall of a two-third majority in Parliament? There were theories galore regarding the intent. But none was wiser.Many in BJP felt PM Modi pushed the bill because it would strengthen the party’s position among women who, in any case, “have tended to favour us over our opponents in elections since 2014”. The bill was, of course, defeated, but it brought out who are in support of women’s quota and who are not.
“Their charges were exposed as lies. That opposition did not budge despite Amit Shah’s offer to write a guarantee about South’s share in the law showed they had manufactured a conspiracy,” said a BJP source.Opposition parties came up with their own conjectures. “There was some hidden agenda. What? I don’t know,” said a senior Tamil Nadu politician. SP’s Akhilesh Yadav echoed a vast majority of opposition members when he said coupling of women’s bill with delimitation was designed to push one under the cover of the other.The dominant theory among opposition was a conspiracy cocktail that cited women’s quota, delimitation and OBC census. Some believe the bill would have relieved pressure to grant another OBC quota, given that “social justice” issues have become a red rag for BJP’s social base of upper castes, as was evident from their incendiary reaction to UGC guidelines.
Poll
Should the women quota bill be decoupled from other contentious issues like delimitation?
