Sonia should have written to RJD, SP for women's reservation bill: BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday took potshots at Congress President Sonia Gandhi urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the passage of the Women's Reservation Bill. The BJP party said that instead of PM Modi, Sonia Gandhi should ask her allies Rashtriya Janata Dal's Lalu Yadav and Samajwadi Party's Mulayam Singh Yadav for the same.

"Rather than writing to the Prime Minister, Sonia Gandhi ought to have written or spoken to her alliance partners like Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav to find out why did they block the Women's Reservation Bill when the UPA was in power," BJP spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao said, according to news agency Press Trust of India.

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad and the then Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav had fiercely opposed the bill when the UPA government introduced it in Parliament in 2010. Both the RJD and SP were then supporting the Congress-led government.

Then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress president had failed to persuade them to back down. The Congress eventually pushed the quota bill out of sight to buy peace with the two Yadavs, whose support the UPA government needed in parliament.

Mounting pressure on the BJP-led NDA, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has reminded Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Women Reservation Bill pending in the Lok Sabha, and urged him to get it passed. The Bill seeks to reserve one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies for women.

In a letter to Modi, Sonia has urged him to take advantage of his majority in the Lok Sabha to get the Bill through. She assured her party's support to the cause.

OneIndia News