Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday backed reserving one-third of seats for women in Parliament and state assemblies but opposed the BJP government’s push to implement the amendment to Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam 2023, without conducting a fresh caste-based census. Yadav alleged the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was orchestrating a ‘massive conspiracy’ to sidestep updated caste data that would secure backward classes’ political representation.
His stand comes ahead of a special three-day Parliament session starting Thursday, where the government plans to move amendments to operationalise the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam passed in September 2023, possibly delinking implementation from the next Census, delimitation exercise.
In a post on social networking platform X, Yadav accused the BJP-led government of attempting to deny Backward Classes their rightful share of political representation.
He described the BJP’s push for the constitutional amendment as a deliberate attempt to bypass a fresh caste-based census, delimitation exercise. “We support women’s reservation, but we stand against the BJP’s calculated conspiracy,” Yadav wrote.
“The BJP and its allies have maintained a conspicuous silence regarding women belonging to the country’s largest demographic segment: the ‘Backward Classes.’ The haste they are showing in the name of this amendment is, in reality, driven by a BJP agenda to avoid conducting a census. If a census were to take place, it would necessitate the release of caste-based data, consequently, the implementation of caste-based reservation. This constitutes a massive conspiracy by the BJP, wherein the rights of the Backward Classes are usurped by sidestepping census-based delimitation,” Akhilesh wrote on X.
He further demanded that political parties be given flexibility to implement the reservation on the basis of proportional representation. He called the move “a clandestine scheme devised by shadowy figures against the spirit of democracy” that remains unacceptable until the underlying process is reformed.
Notably, Yadav’s position mirrors the Samajwadi Party’s traditional stance under his father, late Mulayam Singh Yadav, during the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
In March 2010, when the UPA introduced the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha, the Samajwadi Party, along with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Janata Dal (United), mounted fierce resistance. SP, RJD MPs disrupted proceedings, tore copies of the bill, threw them towards the chairman of the Rajya Sabha. Both Houses were repeatedly adjourned amid the chaos.
Mulayam Singh Yadav had argued that the bill, without a “quota within quota” for women from Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Muslims, other backward sections, would benefit only affluent urban women, sideline the rural poor.
The bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha with support from the Congress, BJP, Left parties, but the UPA could not bring it to the Lok Sabha due to the threat of withdrawal of support by SP, RJD. The legislation ultimately lapsed.
The SP has consistently demanded, across both the UPA, NDA eras, that any women’s quota must include sub-quotas for OBC, other backward women, supported by updated caste data from a fresh Census.
www.hindustantimes.com
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