Delimitation, not women's reservation, real issue: Sonia Gandhi
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New Delhi (PTI): Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Monday asserted the real issue with the government's move to bring bills in a special sitting of Parliament this week is delimitation, not women's reservation, and claimed that the reported delimitation proposal is "extremely dangerous" as well as an "assault on the Constitution itself".
Gandhi stressed that any delimitation involving an increase in the strength of the Lok Sabha must be politically, and not just arithmetically, equitable.
In an article published in The Hindu, she also alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's real intention now is to further "delay and derail" the caste census.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is making appeals to opposition parties to support bills that the government wants to bulldoze through Parliament in a special session when the election campaign in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal will be at its peak, she said.
"There can be only one reason for the extraordinary hurry, which is to derive political advantage and place the Opposition on the defensive," she alleged.
The prime minister is, as usual, being economical with the truth, Gandhi claimed.
Noting that Parliament passed the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 unanimously in September 2023 during a special session, Gandhi said the law introduced Article 334-A in the Constitution which mandated one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabhas, scheduled to come into effect after the completion of the next Census and the Census-based delimitation process.
"The Opposition had not asked for this condition. In fact, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, had forcefully demanded that the reservation provision be implemented from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections itself. For reasons best known to itself, the government did not agree," she pointed out in her article.
"Now, we are given to understand that Article 334-A will be amended to make women's reservation applicable from 2029 itself. Why did it take the Prime Minister 30 months to make his U-turn? And why can he not wait a few weeks to convene the special session?" she said.
Opposition leaders have written to the government not once but thrice requesting that an all-party meeting be convened after the last phase of elections is over in West Bengal on April 29, to discuss what the new proposals of the government are, but that perfectly reasonable request has been turned down, Gandhi said.
"Instead, the Prime Minister has resorted to writing op-eds, making appeals to political parties, and organising sammelans. It is an underhand tactic that reflects the Prime Minister's one-upmanship and his 'my way or the highway' approach to decision-making," Gandhi said.
"The last decadal Census was due in 2021. The Modi government kept postponing it. One consequence of this has been that over 10 crore people have been deprived of their legal entitlements under the National Food Security Act, 2013 that provides the basis for the Pradhar Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yoiana," she said.
Gandhi further noted that Census operations have begun only after an inexplicable delay of five years.
"It is being proudly claimed that it is a digital Census. Senior officials have themselves publicly declared that because of its digital nature, most of the population enumeration numbers will be available in 2027 itself. The government's excuses for its tearing hurry to call this session and conduct delimitation are evidently hollow," Gandhi said.
Almost exactly a year ago, the prime minister announced that the 2027 Census would also be a caste census and this was after filing affidavits in the Supreme Court and answering questions in Parliament rejecting the idea of conducting a caste census, she said.
"This was also after the Prime Minister accused Congress leaders calling for a caste census as suffering from what he called 'an urban naxal mindset'," Gandhi said.
Be that as it may, Census 2027 is supposed to enumerate the population by caste in order to give greater meaning to social justice and empowerment, she said.
Bihar and Telangana have carried out comprehensive caste surveys in their respective states, with the whole process not taking more than six months, she pointed out.
"It is clear, therefore, that the propaganda that a caste census will delay the publication of the Census 2027 is just not true. In fact. the Prime Minister's real intention now is to further delay and derail the caste census," she alleged.
Noting that Parliament's special sitting is scheduled to begin on April 16, Gandhi said till now, there has been no official proposal shared with MPs on what exactly the government wants the session to consider.
It appears that some formula for delimitation is being suggested, she said.
"Any delimitation must be preceded by a Census exercise as in the past. And it goes without saying that any delimitation involving an increase in the strength of the Lok Sabha must be politically -- and not just arithmetically -- equitable," Gandhi asserted.
States that have been pioneers in family planning, and smaller states must not be placed at an absolute or relative disadvantage, she argued.
"A proportionate increase may, in fact, result in the loss of relative influence because the differences in absolute numbers get magnified," Gandhi opined.
Pointing out that The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 provides for reservation within reservation, she said this means that the one-third of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes respectively will also be reserved for women.
"During the debate in September 2023, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha had demanded that a similar reservation be also provided for women belonging to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Reservation for OBCs has been already provided for in higher education and government employment," she said.
"The monsoon session of Parliament will begin in mid-July. The heavens will not fall if the government were to call an all-party meeting after April 29, to discuss its proposals with the Opposition, allowing time for a public debate and then have the Constitution Amendment Bills considered in the monsoon session," she said.
There is simply no justification, except "narrative management during troubled times", for this tearing hurry to "bulldoze" extremely far-reaching changes to our polity, Gandhi said.
"The process is deeply flawed and anti-democratic. Reservation for women is not the issue here. That has already been settled. The real issue is delimitation which based on the information unofficially available, is extremely dangerous and an assault on the Constitution itself," Gandhi said.
The Budget Session of Parliament has been extended, and a special three-day sitting of the House has been convened from April 16 to 18, during which amendments to the 'Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam', more commonly known as the Women Reservation Act, will be brought for its implementation in 2029.
While elections in Puducherry, Assam and Kerala were held on April 9, polls in West Bengal would be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. In Tamil Nadu, polls will be held in a single phase on April 23.
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Those hit by SIR deletions may see their other rights diluted: Prashant Bhushan
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Kolkata (PTI): Senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan expressed alarm over large-scale deletion of names under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, saying those affected by it may see their "other rights diluted or withdrawn".
Backing his apprehensions expressed at a press conference here on Sunday, political activist Yogendra Yadav warned that the removal of the names of lakhs of voters through the SIR exercise may extend beyond electoral disenfranchisement and impact other identity-linked rights.
Those excluded from electoral rolls could be the first to face scrutiny in other identification systems, he claimed.
"Today, it is the voters' list. Tomorrow, questions may be raised about the authenticity of identity documents like Aadhaar. Those already struck off the rolls could be the earliest to be affected," Yadav said.
Nearly 91 lakh voters have been deleted from the electoral rolls in West Bengal following the Special Intensive Revision exercise in the state, according to data released by the Election Commission.
The poll panel is yet to officially announce the final voter base for the state after the roll revision process. From the available figures, however, the total deletion in the state at this point, based on the 7.66 crore electors identified at the end of October last year, stands at over 11.85 per cent.
Backing Yadav's concerns, Bhushan alleged the developments indicate a broader attempt at disenfranchisement, while stressing that the right to vote is foundational to all other democratic entitlements.
"If the right to vote is taken away, it opens the door for other rights to be diluted or withdrawn. What we are witnessing is not an isolated exercise but something that could fundamentally alter the relationship between citizens and the state," he said.
The senior advocate further claimed that earlier attempts to reconfigure citizenship frameworks had not yielded the desired outcome, and alternative mechanisms were now being employed.
"Constitutional guarantees cannot be easily amended, but indirect routes appear to be in play to achieve similar ends," he claimed.
Economist Parakala Prabhakar, taking a longer-term view of the matter, said the implications of the revision process could go beyond immediate electoral outcomes and reshape the very nature of citizenship in the country.
"There is a risk that India may gradually be divided into two distinct categories -- those who retain voting rights and those who are effectively excluded. Such a shift would strike at the core of universal adult franchise," he said.
The trio's remarks come ahead of hearings in the Supreme Court, expected early next week, on petitions challenging the SIR of electoral rolls.
Citing data, Yadav questioned the rationale behind the deletions, noting that West Bengal's electoral rolls had earlier shown near parity with its adult population.
He also pointed to "anomalies" in the process, claiming that while other states witnessed an increase in voter numbers between draft and final rolls, West Bengal stood out as an exception.
"This divergence suggests that something unusual has occurred here," Yadav said.
Alleging targeted exclusion, Yadav said that post-verification deletions appeared to have disproportionately affected certain communities.
He cited constituency-level examples to argue that the pattern of removals was not random. "If such disproportionate figures do not indicate targeted action, it is difficult to explain what does," he remarked.
Prabhakar described the upcoming hearing as a crucial moment. "The judiciary now has an opportunity to reaffirm and protect the foundational principles of the Constitution," he said.
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