IndiaPost.com - Women's bill: Panel suggests quota on basis of backward class

NEW DELHI: Faced with demands for getting the OBC tag from several communities like Gujjars, a Parliamentary panel has suggested reservation for women in Parliament and state legislatures on the basis of "backward class" instead of Other Backward Classes (OBC).

The proposal has been circulated to the members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice today in a fresh move to reach a consensus on the contentious Women's Reservation Bill that has been pending for over a decade.

The bill which proposes 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament and state legislatures remains stalled due to the insistence by some parties on a 'quota within quota'. Racing against time, the Committee, headed by senior Congress MP E M Sudarshana Natchiappan, is forwarding the proposal to political parties and it could be adopted if there was consensus among political parties on the proposed amendment by August one.

However, if this could not be done by that day, the issue would be left to the reconstituted panel as the term of the Natchiappan committee would end on August four. Sources in the Committee said that the panel has proposed an amendment in the Constitution by including Article 330A(4) in order to make some headway on the Bill.

The new proposal has been mooted as a "compromise formula" in view of the fact that the discussion with various political parties, NGOs and other stakeholders, the Committee came to the understanding that one of the main reasons for the pendency of the Bill was on the OBC issue.

Observing that identification of the OBC citizens in various places could not be done without an acceptable census, they said 17 out of 24 states have adopted various formulae already for providing the OBC reservation. This has been done to ensure reaching out to such castes and groups in an adequate manner.

The committee said the same formulae could be replicated for identifying the backward class of citizens till the adequate representation was reached in assembly and Parliament on the basis of resolutions of the state legislatures. Then the Parliament could make law, the sources said.