Opposition to meet on April 15 on women's quota; CWC says govt sabotaging caste census

NEW DELHI: A meeting of opposition parties has been convened on April 15 to forge a common stand on govt’s proposed amendments to the women’s reservation law, with Congress Working Committee (CWC) Friday discussing the issue ahead of the "special session” of Parliament from April 16-18.The committee struck a strident note against the move to delink Census 2026 and delimitation from the quota measure, and also accused the governing BJP of trying to sabotage “caste census” and of seeking to influence the Tamil Nadu and West Bengal elections by scheduling the Parliament sitting during the poll campaign period. During the special session, it is anticipated that the opposition may move amendments to the govt proposal, which is not known yet, which may lead to a deadlock. The govt needs the support of the opposition to pass the constitutional amendment.CWC, chaired by party president Mallikarjun Kharge and attended by Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, K C Venugopal, Sachin Pilot, Abhishek Singhvi, Manish Tewari, Jitender Singh, among others, discussed the issue in detail Friday. The gathering slammed the govt for not sharing its proposed amendments with the opposition a week before the special sitting, and lashed out at reports that the strength of states in Lok Sabha would be raised by 50%. Kharge, Rahul and Priyanka said the govt is playing politics in the garb of women’s reservation. Rahul is learnt to have said the govt move to increase the seats in LS would result in inter-regional divide, like between the north and southern states. Chief ministers Siddaramaiah, Revanth Reddy and Sukhwinder Sukhu said the southern states and smaller states would lose out in the process.Importantly, Pilot is said to have argued that basing the “delimitation” on Census 2026 would help in carving a sub-quota for OBC women, as caste is being enumerated this time. It was also argued that Census 2026 figures would be important for SC/ST too, since their population has increased and may require the number of seats reserved for them to be hiked. Delinking the delimitation from the current census would hurt OBCs and SCs/STs both, even as it was insinuated that the govt was wanting to “sabotage” the caste census.Tewari and Mukul Wasnik are said to have argued that the govt cannot fix the strength in LS and assemblies, and then ask for delimitation, and instead a “delimitation commission” has to be constituted which will arrive at its own numbers. Some leaders argued that Congress supports women’s reservation, but the order of the constitutional process of “census-delimitation-SC/ST/women’s quota” should be followed. Sonia Gandhi is learnt to have cautioned that the party should not be seen to be opposing it.There was also a strong voice against increasing the strength of Lok Sabha and assemblies, as over 800 MPs could make the Parliament non-functional. As demanded by DMK chief M K Stalin, Congress leaders felt 1/3rd women’s quota can be carved out from the present 543 MPs in LS.