According to the 73rd and 74th Amendment Act of the Constitution, passed in 1993, one-third of the seats in all rural and urban local bodies are reserved for women.
Amid reports that the NDA government may revive the Women’s Reservation Bill, for reserving one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies for women, the Centre has canned a move to bring a central legislation to provide 50 per cent quota to women in Panchayati Raj institutions.
Former Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh had, in early 2016, mooted the idea of bringing in a Constitution Amendment Bill to reserve half the seats in all three tiers of rural local bodies — gram panchayats, panchayat samitis and zilla parishads — for women.
However, following resistance, especially from the BJP-ruled state of Uttar Pradesh, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj has decided to leave it to the states to bring in their own legislation. “It is a political matter. Hence we think it is best that the states themselves bring in a law to reserve half the seats for women,” said a source in the ministry.
According to the 73rd and 74th Amendment Act of the Constitution, passed in 1993, one-third of the seats in all rural and urban local bodies are reserved for women.
At the time when Birender Singh proposed the legislation last year, 16 states already had laws in place that reserved half their seats in rural local bodies for women — a few extended the reservation to their urban local bodies too. Since then, four more states have enacted similar laws, the latest being Punjab, which enacted the law in July this year, four months after Congress Chief Minister Amarinder Singh assumed office.
However, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Goa and Jammu and Kashmir, all BJP-ruled, are yet to bring in such a legislation. The five Northeastern states of Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh also have not brought in the legislation.
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