BENGALURU: Senior Congress leader Margaret Alva on Monday said that the BJP brought the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, to implement the delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies, keeping in mind the elections to the West Bengal and Tamil Nadu Assemblies. It will, however, face a backlash as it is falsely projecting it as an attempt to implement 33% reservation for women in elected bodies, she said. “The Women’s Reservation Bill was passed unanimously in 2023, and it is in the statute book. What is the problem for the Centre to implement the same?” Alva, a former union minister, told reporters at the KPCC office in Bengaluru.
“The Centre knew that the Bill would be defeated. Yet, Amit Shah tried to get the support of the Opposition by threatening them with agencies such as the ED and CBI. We thank PM Narendra Modi for uniting the Opposition parties like never before,” she said.
She said that the women of the country cannot be fooled. “What is the sinister game the government is trying to play?” she asked, attacking the Centre, saying it has been delaying the implementation of the women’s reservation, linking it to the census and delimitation.
She further elaborated that the Women’s Reservation Bill has been under discussion since the time of former PM Rajiv Gandhi, who had set up a 14-member committee by appointing her as the chairperson. “We prepared a report and studied what should be done to increase the dignity of women in 12 sectors. We submitted it to the government in 1989. In this report, we mainly advocated the political empowerment of women. No matter what position we give, empowerment is impossible without a political position,” she elaborated.