Congress parliamentarian Rahul Gandhi has said that his party regrets that it was not able to pass the Women’s Reservation Bill when it was in power.
While addressing the media at Congress headquarters on Friday, Gandhi said that had his party accepted the demand for a quota for women from Other Backward Class (OBC) communities the legislation would have come into effect years ago.
Notably, the bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha (upper house of the Parliament) in 2010 but stalled in the Lok Sabha (lower house) as the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) demanded a quota within a quota for OBC women which Congress refused.
Gandhi also said that the bill is a “excellent step forward” but it is unlikely to be implemented anytime soon.
“Women's Reservation Bill is great but we received two footnotes that Census and Delimitation need to be done before that. Both of these will take years. The truth is that the Reservation can be implemented today,” the Congress parliamentarian said.
The ex-Congress chief stated that the implementation of the bill is not complicated but the government lacks the will to apply it.
“The government has presented this before the country but it will be implemented 10 years from now. Nobody knows if this will even be implemented,” he said adding that this is a distraction and diversion tactic.