Spokesperson: Ms. Supriya Shrinate:She said that the Women’s Reservation Bill is a long-awaited judgement on the empowerment of women, a long-awaited legislation that has been passed. We welcome its passage. We obviously have serious issues with how delayed it’s going to be, because this looks like yet another tall promise that may not see the fruition of the day. You never know when it happens. According to the government’s own admission, it will not happen before 2029. According to what some MPs and Ministers of the government have said in the house, its link to delimitation and census… and delimitation of 2026, according to Article 82 and 81 (3) of the Constitution, cannot happen before the census of 2031. So, realistically speaking, are we going to wait up until 2039? And of course, not a word on women coming from the backward classes, something that we have been talking about… the backward castes completely missing.

I saw a picture, it’s a beautiful picture actually… it’s a picture of BJPs women MPs, and they all thronged around Mr. Modi congratulating him after the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed. It’s a picture that makes all of us happy, I was very happy to see this picture. But the moment I thought about it, how each one of these women… not one, not two, but each of the smiling faces have kept conspicuously quiet each time a gruesome crime has happened against some women or the other across the country, it hangs my head in shame.

I expect that new members of Parliament, new women who will be elected to our legislature are not going to keep quiet when an eight-year-old is going to be drugged, brutality raped and murdered in Kathua. She is not going to stand up for those who are perpetrators of this crime; she is going to ask for justice, unlike what these women did. I do hope that the new MPs, who are women, who get elected are not going to keep quiet when Kuldeep Singh Sengar is found guilty…not charged, but guilty of rape and murder… they are not going to keep quiet when a 19-year-old levels serious charges and her father, her uncle, her aunts die in the process. They are not going to wait for the High Court to give its observations and only then will law enforcement move against Kuldeep Singh Sengar. I do hope they will not keep quiet unlike these women, when sexual exploitation charges are levelled against Chinmayanand in Shahjahanpur. I hope they will not keep quiet when elected representatives are disrobed and their clothes are torn in Lakhimpur, unlike these women who did not say a word. I do hope that the new women MPs are not going to keep quiet when they see India’s most decorated athletes being dragged on roads... they have brought us maximum glory… they will not keep quiet when they are dragged on roads, mercilessly beaten up because they level sexual exploitation charges against one of BJP’s MPs. I hope the new members of Parliament are going to speak against the BJP, are going to speak against the leadership and say- a man like Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who is charge-sheeted for sexual exploitation, cannot be a part of our decision-making, cannot be our colleague in Parliament.

I do hope they will ask what is our double engine government doing in Manipur. I do hope they will ask the Women Commission why did they not lodge a complaint… because when you elect women, you expect them to speak for other women, to speak for one- half of humanity, you expect them to voice their opinion and ask for justice.

Women in the BJP who have been elected to Parliament… with all due respect to the election… have really let down half the country’s populations. And I do hope the Women’s Reservation Bill, and whoever gets elected, is going to change that. Saturday, September 23, 2023.