New Delhi: A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking immediate of implementation of the Women’s Reservation Bill passed by the Parliament in September 2023, before the Parliamentary General Election in 2024. Last month, the President of India signed into law the women’s reservation bill that had been unanimously passed by both houses of parliament.
The Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023 seeks to reserve one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha, the upper houses of the state legislatures, and the Delhi legislative assembly. The act also introduces horizontal reservation for women from scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST) within the women’s quota. However, as per the Act, women’s reservation will come into effect after a delimitation exercise is conducted following the next census and will be in operation for a period of fifteen years.
The petition filed by Congress leader Dr. Jaya Thakur seeks to declare this clog. i.e. “after the delimitation is undertaken for this purposes after the relevant figures for the first census” as “void-ab initio” and seeks immediate implementation of the Bill.
“In the democratic process all corner of the society’s representation is required, but from the last 75 years there is no adequate representation of women in the parliament as well as in the State Legislature. This is the long pending demand from the decades and the parliament rightly passed the above act for 33% reservation but putting the clog that the said act will be implemented “after the delimitation is undertaken for this purposes after the relevant figures for the first census” which may kindly be declared as “void-ab-initio”, for immediate implementation of the 33% women reservation” the plea states.
The plea states that the constitutional amendment must not be withheld for an uncertain period, especially because the bill was passed in a special session specifically called for this purpose and had been unanimously passed by both houses of the parliament.