Over 66% voters favour scrapping anti-abortion laws in Ireland
Dublin, May 27: A total of 66.4 per cent of voters voted to scrap the present anti-abortion laws in Ireland in a referendum, according to the final results announced by a returning officer here on Saturday.
A total of 33.6 per cent of voters chose to retain the present abortion laws, or widely known as the Eighth Amendment among locals, that virtually ban abortions in the country, said the returning officer Barry Ryan.
Ryan declared the above results of the referendum in front of a large cheering crowd of people gathering at a central count center at Dublin Castle, a main government complex in the Irish capital of Dublin, Xinhua reported.
According to Ryan, nearly 3.37 million voters were registered for the referendum and 64.1 per cent of them turned out in Friday's voting with some 6,000 votes declared invalid.
The turnout of the referendum was one of the highest in any referendums ever held in Ireland and this indicated how important the abortion issue meant for the Irish people.
The referendum received an overwhelming victory in almost all the 40 constituencies across the country except in Donegal, a constituency in the country's northwest, with 51.9 per cent of voters voting against repealing the Eighth Amendment.
Dublin ranked in the first place in terms of Yes vote for ending the constitutional ban in the country with a Yes vote of 75.5 per cent, followed by the eastern region of Leinster (66.6 per cent), the southwest region of Munster (63.3 per cent), and the midwest and northwest regions of Connacht and Ulster (57.5 per cent), according to the official results of the referendum.
A breakdown of the voting results indicated that the more developed a region, the higher it has the Yes vote.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the referendum marked a culmination of "a quite revolution" which has taken place in the country over the last few decades.
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BJP using women's quota bill as front to pass Delimitation Bill that will break India: Mamata
Cooch Behar (WB) (PTI): Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday alleged the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre was using the proposed amendment to the women's quota law in Parliament as a front for the Delimitation Bill that would "break the country into pieces".
The TMC will fight this Central government's move at every step, she asserted at her party's poll rally here.
The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill to tweak the women's quota law, along with the Delimitation Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, to implement the proposed amended women's quota law, in the Union territories of Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir, were introduced in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
According to the Constitution amendment bill, Lok Sabha seats will be increased to a maximum of 850 from the current 543 to "operationalise" the women's reservation law before the 2029 parliamentary polls, following a delimitation exercise based on the 2011 Census.
Seats will also be increased in state and Union territory assemblies to accommodate 33 per cent reservation for women.
Opposing the Centre's move, Banerjee alleged that "the BJP brought the Delimitation Bill while keeping the women's reservation bill at the front".
"The BJP is trying to increase the number of seats in the Lok Sabha to nearly 850 through the Delimitation Bill. It will break the country into pieces," the TMC supremo said.
She also alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not speaking the truth about the development of north Bengal at a BJP rally last week.
"The prime minister said nothing was done for the development of north Bengal. But we spent Rs 1.72 lakh crore on the development of the region," Banerjee said and asked Modi to cross-check data before making such remarks.
