HYDERABAD: BRS MLC Kalvakuntla Kavitha said that with the passing of the Women’s Reservation Bill, women of the country will witness better days in the future. It will pave the way for more women to enter the legislature, she said.
The MLC stated that there are currently 78 women MPs in Parliament and with this Bill, that number will reach 181. She thanked the Deve Gowda government for their efforts in 1996, Sonia Gandhi in 2010 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2023 for presenting the Bill in Parliament.
Kavita on Saturday delivered the keynote address at a conference organised by Bridge India, a leading public policy organisation based in London, on the topic, “Women’s Reservation, Women’s Participation in the Democratic Process”.
Addressing the gathering, she highlighted the efforts of CM K Chandrasekhar Rao in passing the Women’s Reservation Bill. She reminded that in the first Assembly session of the newly formed Telangana State, a resolution was passed calling for passing the Bill. After that, BRS MPs raised the issue in Parliament on many occasions and KCR also wrote a letter to the Prime Minister in this regard, she said.
However, the lack of a quota for OBC women in the reservation is a cause for concern, she said. Kavitha remembered how in countries like UK, America and Japan, women had to fight for the right to vote for decades but in India leaders like Dr B R Ambedkar, Jawahar Lal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi gave women the right to vote without asking.
Kavitha reminded that in almost all the States barring a couple of them, the 33 per cent reservation in local bodies is already being implemented and the participation of women in local administration increased to nearly 57 per cent. The BRC MLC said she takes pride in the fact that in Telangana, about 55-57 per cent of the local body posts are occupied by women. She said that, of those positions, 92 per cent of them belonged to the BRS.