Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said his government’s Women’s Reservation Bill was a “noble effort” that was “derailed” by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Indian National Congress, accusing them of turning it into a “target of hatred and petty politics”.
Addressing a poll rally in Coimbatore, the Prime Minister, while targeting the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu and the Congress over the Bill’s defeat in the Lok Sabha on Friday, asked, “Why does it trouble DMK, Congress to see ordinary women rise?”
He said he had personally appealed to opposition parties to support the Bill and had even offered to give them credit, adding, “I only wanted sisters from ordinary families to come to Parliament and Assemblies in good numbers.”
“But unfortunately, this noble effort got derailed. DMK, Congress and their allies made it a target of hatred and petty politics,” he charged.
Modi said that had the Bill been passed, many women from ordinary families in Tamil Nadu would have become MPs and MLAs. “Based on the 2011 Census, Tamil Nadu was going to get many more seats in the Lok Sabha, but clearly the DMK didn’t want this to happen,” he said.
“Why does it trouble DMK, Congress to see ordinary women rise? These one-family parties want power to remain confined within their own families,” he alleged, in an apparent reference to the Congress and the DMK.
He appealed to women in Tamil Nadu to question the DMK over its opposition to the Bill, asking why it had “denied Tamil women this golden opportunity”.
“On April 23, give them a clear, powerful message,” he said, referring to the polling day.
(With inputs from PTI)