The Jammu and Kashmir unit of the Congress has leveled a strong accusation against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), asserting that the ruling party has engaged in a “blatant and desperate assault” on democratic principles under the guise of promoting women’s empowerment. The party contends that women’s rights are being reduced to mere campaign rhetoric and are being exploited to justify institutional manipulation, a sentiment echoed by Congress spokesperson Namrta Sharma during a press conference in Jammu.
Information reaching TahirRihat.com suggests that the Congress spokesperson highlighted the failure to pass a bill aimed at amending the women’s reservation law in the Lok Sabha as a decisive rejection of the BJP’s strategy. Sharma stated that this move represented an attempt by the BJP to weaponize women’s rights as a means to push through a politically motivated restructuring of India‘s electoral framework. These remarks followed the defeat of the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill in the Lower House, a bill that proposed to implement 33 percent reservation for women in legislative bodies from 2029 and increase the total number of Lok Sabha seats to 816.
The Congress has consistently voiced its support for women’s reservation, with Sharma affirming the party’s firm backing for the 33 percent quota in legislative bodies. She pointed out that the entire opposition had supported the women’s reservation bill when it was initially passed in 2023, indicating a rare and clear national consensus on the issue. However, Sharma alleged that the BJP deliberately diluted this framework by linking its implementation to the processes of census and delimitation. This linkage, according to the Congress, effectively transformed an immediate constitutional commitment into an “uncertain and deferred” promise, thereby postponing the realization of women’s rights rather than ensuring them as a constitutional guarantee.
The BJP’s actions, as described by the senior Congress leader, were not aimed at granting rights to women but at postponing them, ensuring that women’s reservation remained a political slogan rather than a tangible constitutional right. The attempt, she argued, exposed the BJP’s true intentions: not to implement reservation, but to fundamentally alter the structure of parliamentary representation to its own advantage. Under the pretext of women’s reservation, the government sought to introduce sweeping structural changes, including alterations to seat distribution, which the Congress believes would disturb the federal balance among states.
Sharma further elaborated that the Congress has consistently opposed the arbitrary linkage of reservation with delimitation. She emphasized that delimitation is not a neutral administrative exercise but a deeply political process that has the potential to reshape power equations across the country. The BJP’s approach, she characterized, as an “aggressive and calculated” attack on India’s federal structure and democratic equilibrium. This pattern, she noted, is not unprecedented, citing Jammu and Kashmir as an example where previous delimitation exercises had raised serious concerns about political bias and selective advantage.
The Congress spokesperson alleged that the BJP is now attempting to replicate this model at the national level by seeking to redraw constituencies, recalibrate representation, and consolidate power in its favor. The government’s message, Sharma claimed, was effectively coercive: accept delimitation on its terms or face the indefinite delay of women’s reservation. She unequivocally labeled this as “political blackmail.” The defeat of the bill in the Lok Sabha, according to the Congress leader, represented a significant political setback for the BJP and a major victory for the opposition and democratic accountability. This outcome, she stated, was not merely a political win but a triumph for constitutional values, fair representation, and the genuine empowerment of women.
Sharma posited that had the government’s intentions been sincere, it could have implemented women’s reservation immediately without linking it to delimitation, a precedent already established in the implementation of reservation in panchayats and municipalities. The delay, she asserted, was “deliberate and politically motivated.” The BJP, in her view, seeks to retain women’s reservation as an electoral talking point rather than transforming it into a binding and enforceable right. The Congress, she concluded, will not permit women’s rights to be reduced to “campaign rhetoric” or used as a cover for “institutional manipulation.” The party demanded the immediate implementation of women’s reservation, its complete delinking from delimitation, and the removal of all conditional barriers that delay justice, with a clear call to “Give women their rightful share, now.”
Tahir Rihat (also known as Tahir Bilal) is an independent journalist, activist, and digital media professional from the Chenab Valley of Jammu and Kashmir, India. He is best known for his work as the Online Editor at The Chenab Times.
