Uttar Pradesh legislature special session: BJP should appoint a woman as its national chief, says CLP leader

Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Aradhna Mishra on Thursday challenged the BJP to appoint a woman as the party’s national president and expressed a strong objection to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government attempting to link reservation for women with delimitation.

Mishra expressed this view in the state assembly during a special session on women’s empowerment.

“The BJP is accusing the Opposition, but it fails to explain why the Women’s Reservation Bill, passed into law in 2023 with the Congress’s support, has remained unimplemented till date. Now, it is being asserted that reservation will be granted only after the delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies but, delimitation bears absolutely no relation or connection to women’s reservation,” she said.

Asserting that half the country’s population (women) is looking at the government for their rightful entitlement, she said this is not an issue of the ruling party versus the opposition, nor is it merely a political matter. Rather, it is an issue concerning the rights and entitlements of half the nation’s population.

“The Congress has had five women as its national presidents. The country’s first woman Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, stands as an embodiment of women’s empowerment. It was the Congress party that gave the nation its first female President, and it was the Congress that appointed the country’s first woman Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar. The country’s first woman judge was also appointed during the Congress era, and Uttar Pradesh’s first woman chief minister—Sucheta Kripalani—was also from the Congress party,” said Mishra.

Sirathu MLA Pallavi Patel claimed the BJP has absolutely no desire to grant any reservation to women. It is stalling the process by linking it to issues such as delimitation and the census, she alleged.

Had their intentions been sincere, the BJP government would have proceeded with the follow-up actions regarding the bill passed in 2023, she said, adding, “Yet, as we have all witnessed, no official notification has been gazetted despite the passage of so much time.”

“Now, gripped by the apprehension of failing in their electoral calculations in the days to come, the current BJP government is engaging in self-defeating political propaganda,” Patel said.