Women's organisations demand 50 percent reservation in Lok Sabha, assemblies

New Delhi: A women’s collective, comprising more than 1,600 organisations, on Thursday pitched for the passage of the “long pending” Women’s Reservation Bill in the upcoming Monsoon Session of Parliament which commences on 17 July. [caption id=“attachment_3800621” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Parliament building. PTI[/caption] With the slogan “Ab 33 percent nahi 50 percent”, the National Alliance for Women’s Reservation Bill has demanded 50 percent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies instead of 33 percent. “The Prime Minister had congratulated African countries for women’s majority in their parliament. But when it came to his country, he never said a single word about this Bill,” general secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women, Annie Raja, said. “This is the time to act so that women are able to contest the maximum number of seats in the next election,” she said. In India, women hold a mere 12 percent of the seats in Parliament and nine percent in state assemblies, Director of Centre for Social Research, Ranjana Kumari, said. “Unless there are more women in politics, their concerns cannot be addressed effectively,” she said. Director of the Joint Women’s Programme, Jyotsna Chatterjee, said that the BJP had “committed” support to the women’s reservation bill in its 2014 election manifesto, and now it was time for the party to stand by it. “It is high time to prove what they had declared in their election manifesto. The government says ‘beti bachao beti padhao’, but what about her political rights,” she said.