PM Modi, Bengal CM Mamata Exchange Verbal Spat In Poll Rallies

On Friday, the BJP-led government failed to secure passage of the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill in the Lok Sabha. The bill sought to implement 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament and state assemblies before the 2029 Lok Sabha polls through a delimitation exercise based on the 2011 Census.

After seeking forgiveness from the women of the country and blaming the Opposition for defeating women’s quota bill in Parliament on Saturday evening, the PM, addressing election rallies at Bishnupur in Bengal’s Bankura district and Purulia district, said TMC in collusion with the Congress, blocked the passage of the bill as it is ‘opposed to women’s empowerment’.

“We have seen how TMC betrayed women in Parliament and conspired with Congress to prevent the passage of the bill as it is against women’s empowerment. On the other hand, BJP’s identity is tied to women’s empowerment, and their safety and security. That is why women across the country shower the BJP with their blessings,” he said in Bishnupur poll rally.

“We want the role of women to expand in building a developed India and want more and more women to enter politics. But West Bengal has seen once again how the TMC betrayed the state’s sisters and daughters,” he added.

The prime minister also accused the TMC of insulting President Droupadi Murmu and being indifferent to tribal communities’ concerns. “The anti-tribal TMC insulted President Murmu. Both the TMC and the Congress are anti-tribal. That is why they fielded a candidate against Droupadi Murmu in the presidential elections,” he said.

Slamming PM Modi’s address to the nation as “cowardly, hypocritical and fork-tongued” and an effort to mislead the people, the Bengal CM said TMC has always championed higher political representation for women and has 37.9 percent of elected women members in Lok Sabha and 46 percent in Rajya Sabha. “The question of opposing Women’s Reservation does not arise and never has,” she stressed on her X handle.

“What we are fundamentally opposed to is the Delimitation exercise that the Modi Government was plotting to push through by using women as a shield for its vested political agenda. What we are fundamentally opposed to is the altering of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Constitution, the division of this nation and the usurpation of power through gerrymandering, by redrawing political contours to hand greater representation to BJP-ruled states at the expense of others. This is an assault on federal democracy. And we will not watch it happen in silence,” she clarified.

Banerjee asked if the Modi-government was genuinely serious about women rights, why it waited nearly three years after the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill on September 28, 2023. “Why rush it through when several states are in election? And why couple it with Delimitation?” she asked.

The TMC supremo said her party has stood for women for decades and will continue to do so. “We will not be lectured on a subject that the ruling dispensation neither understands nor respects”, she said.

Also she told the PM to have the courage to address the nation from the Floor of Parliament, where he is “subject to scrutiny, challenge and accountability”