Samajwadi Party MP Akhilesh Yadav speaks in the Lok Sabha during the Special session of Parliament, in New Delhi (PTI Photo)
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh, on Thursday, demanded that OBC and Muslim women be given reservation under the provisions of the women’s reservation legislation and said that if the Bills were as good as the BJP claimed, they should be made public to women workers protesting in Noida and other cities.
Speaking during the special session of Parliament to discuss three Bills dealing with delimitation and women’s reservation, Akhilesh said, “We demand that the first census should be done. If they are not doing it, then they are cheating… Their secret people must have drawn the map.”
“I request Backwards, minorities and Muslims should be given reservation… You can’t achieve the goal of reservation if you don’t give Muslim women and Backward women reservation,” said the member of Lok Sabha from Kannauj.
Stating that the SP has always been in favour of women’s reservation, Akhilesh said the BJP “is trying to make nari (women) into a nara (slogan)”. “The ones who never kept women in their organisation. The parental organisation you come from. I ask how many women are in that organisation?” asked Akhilesh, referring to the RSS.
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Akhilesh said he agreed with Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi, who alleged that through delimitation, the BJP wants to change the “electoral map of the country”. “We want the census to be done first because once the data comes, then it should be done. Because the basis of the reservation is on population. Do they not count Muslim women in half of the population? We demand that Muslim and OBC women be included in this reservation,” said the SP president.
Akhilesh said the BJP is trying to use several conspiracies through the Special Intensive Revision in UP, but after failing, they are now bringing delimitation.
Alleging a “silence” from the BJP on OBC women, Akhilesh said: “When we used to hear the PM, he said that he was a Backward… The rush here is because they don’t want to make reservations based on the caste census. We will not accept it till it is implemented properly. If we count that OBCs are 66 per cent, then OBC women will be 33 per cent. They don’t want to give the rights to OBC women.”
