Disha Tandon, Pune
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government failed to include an OBC quota in the 2010 women’s reservation bill, which ultimately prevented the measure from being passed by the Lok Sabha. Rahul Gandhi expressed remorse over this mistake on Friday. The demand for a quota within the quota for the Other Backward Classes (OBC) gained momentum, with several opposition parties raising the issue.
At a news conference held at the Congress headquarters in Delhi, Gandhi acknowledged that if the sub-quota had been included in the UPA-drafted bill, the women’s reservation policy would have been implemented years ago.
Out of the 131 reserved seats for SC/STs in the current Lok Sabha, which includes 84 for SCs and 47 for STs, only 20 seats are occupied by women, accounting for a mere 15.2%. The OBCs are poorly represented because there are no reservations for them in either the Parliament or the state assembly. In light of this, discussions on the representation of marginalized women have once again assumed a political center stage as the Women’s Reservation Bill, which guarantees 33% reservation for women, is laid forth on the Loksabha’s agenda.
Gandhi further said that the bill for women’s reservations under the current administration was an effort to deflect attention away from the call for a caste census. He emphasized that two tiny subtexts were present when they read the fine print. One was that it would be done after delimitation , and the other was that it would be done after a census.
Gandhi also criticized the lack of representation of OBCs in the government. He pointed out that only three out of 90 officers at the secretary-level were OBCs. He also alleged that these OBC officers have control over only five percent of sanctioned budgets. “If we want to distribute power, we have to know how many OBCs are there in India and how many different communities are there in India”, he said.
Gandhi further stated that the caste census results will be made public if Congress were to win the election. He claimed that it appears as though they are consistently putting these OBC MPs on one side while removing the true power of the OBCs from the other side.
Rahul Gandhi expressed remorse about the UPA administration’s decision to omit an OBC quota from the 2010 women’s reservation law and charged the present administration of misdirecting focus away from the call for a caste census. He also questioned the absence of OBC representation in the administration and urged that, if we want to distribute power, we should be aware of the number of OBCs and the number of different communities in India.