Sonia Gandhi Raises Concerns Over Proposed Legislative Agenda in Parliament

Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the Congress parliamentary party, expressed serious concerns on Monday regarding the legislative agenda proposed by the central government for the upcoming special session of Parliament. She described the agenda as extremely dangerous and a direct assault on the Constitution. In an article published in a prominent newspaper, Gandhi emphasized that the primary issue before Parliament is not the reservation for women, but the implications of the delimitation process.

 

In her article, Gandhi pointed out that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is urging opposition parties to support bills that the government intends to pass during the special session, coinciding with the peak of election campaigning in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. She suggested that this rush is likely motivated by a desire for political gain and to put the opposition on the defensive. Gandhi accused the Prime Minister of being detached from reality, noting that Parliament had unanimously passed the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 during a special session in September 2023.

 

The Act added Article 334-A to the Constitution, mandating one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, which will come into effect after the next census and the census-based delimitation process is completed. She stated that the opposition had not agreed to this condition. In fact, Mallikarjun Kharge, the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, had strongly demanded that the reservation provisions be implemented starting with the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, a request the government did not accept. Gandhi questioned why it took the Prime Minister 30 months to reverse his stance on this issue. She also mentioned that the government rejected the opposition's call for an all-party meeting.

 

Gandhi alleged that convening a parliamentary session amid assembly elections is a covert strategy that reflects the Prime Minister's monopolistic decision-making and his 'my way or the highway' approach. The former Congress president recalled that the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Bills were passed by Parliament in April and June 1993, respectively, after nearly five years of discussion, leading to the enactment of laws for women's reservation in panchayati raj institutions and municipalities. She credited this as a unique achievement of the late former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Gandhi asserted that the 2021 census, which was supposed to take place, has been delayed by the Modi government, resulting in over 10 crore people being deprived of their legal rights under the National Food Security Act, 2013. She argued that the government's justifications for calling this session and pushing for delimitation are clearly hollow. Gandhi claimed that the Prime Minister's true intention is to further delay and derail the caste census.

 

She noted that the special session is set to commence on April 16. However, no official proposal has been shared with the MPs regarding what the government actually intends to discuss during the session. It appears that a formula for delimitation is being suggested. Any delimitation should precede the census process, as has been the norm in the past. It goes without saying that any increase in the number of Lok Sabha seats should be politically justified, not merely mathematically. States that have excelled in family planning should not be treated equally with smaller states. According to the Congress leader, proportional increases in the number of seats could lead to a relative loss of influence as disparities in the number of seats among different states widen.