NEW DELHI: Raising the strength of Lok Sabha by one-third and leaving the contentious OBC sub-quota issue to states are the two fresh proposals before a Parliamentary panel for ending the deadlock over the women's reservation bill.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice, which is looking into the issue, has now decided to meet on October seven to take up these two crucial proposals in order to arrive at a consensus on the Bill which is pending for over a decade, panel Chairman E M Sudarshana Natchiappan said.

The meeting would decide whether it would be feasible to increase the seats in Lok Sabha by one-third from the present over 540 to around 700 instead of reserving that many seats for women in the existing House.

"Ninety-five per cent of the political parties are agreeing to pass the Bill and only five per cent is opposing the Bill," he said, adding that the Committee was very keen that the Constitution Amendment Bill was passed in the session itself with consensus.

"We do not want to submit a report with a dissent note," Natchippan said.

The Committee has decided to explore the possibility of increasing the seats in the Lok Sabha as though majority of the male MPs favour reservation, some of them feel that they would be voting for a measure by which they themselves would be voted out.

Natchiappan said to explore this possibility, the Constitution has to be amended to create additional seats to accommodate women and lift the freeze on increasing the Lok Sabha seats. The last Lok Sabha has frozen the seats in Lok Sabha till 2026.

The meeting would also decide on the OBC sub-quota, an issue that was holding up the Bill providing for 33 per cent reservation for women in Lok Sabha and state legislatures.

"In the absence of a national level census, we cannot allot any OB quota and it could at best be left to the state legislatures to decide whether some of the constituencies could be reserved for OBCs," he said.

Any increase in the number of seats would also have to address the issue of whether they would be created through dual membership. Natchiappan said the general feeling of women is that they wanted to be equal to men.

The Committee is at present visiting several states to elicit views of Chief Ministers and leaders of political parties on the Bill. It had already held talks with leaders in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.

Last month, the Committee was given two more months' time to finalise its report.

Samajwadi Party, the newest ally of the ruling UPA coalition at the Centre, had recently made it clear that it was against any haste on the measure.

However, the main opposition BJP said it would support the Bill in its present form and asked the UPA government to clear it in the coming session of Parliament.

 

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