Victorious opposition says delimitation failed, not women’s reservation

NEW DELHI: The victorious opposition hailed the failure of the constitutional amendment as a failure of delimitation and not of women’s reservation.After the opposition’s victory in the polls, Congress’s Rahul Gandhi spoke to TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee and thanked him for his support.There are fears that only a few of the TMC’s 28 MLAs may turn up in the Assembly due to the poll campaign in Bengal. But the TMC sent 21 MPs after repeated requests from members of the Indian bloc who made it clear to Mamata Banerjee that participation in debates and votes was important to defeat the Modi government’s plans. Sources said Banerjee told Rahul that “the tide is turning against the BJP”.The SP’s Akhilesh Yadav called it a “malicious defeat by the BJP”. RSP’s NK Premachandran said the bill’s failure to pass showed that the BJP must consult with the opposition on important issues affecting the country. “This failure is not a failure of quotas for women, but a failure of backdoor delineation,” he said.Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra accused Prime Minister Modi of maliciously linking women’s quota to the delimitation in the 2011 census. “But his hollow attempt to present himself as the savior of women failed today,” she said. She added that if these three bills are passed in Parliament, India’s democracy will not survive.Communist Party of India lawmaker Sandosh Kumar said the government’s failure to legislate showed that any attempt to change the balance of representation was met with strong opposition. He said women in the country must see clearly the BJP’s move to delay women’s quota by linking it to census and delimitation.DMK president MK Stalin, who is leading the protests in Tamil Nadu, said the party is concerned about the issue of delimitation, which “needs to be carefully considered to ensure fairness, especially for the southern states”. He said the government should delink women’s quota from delimitation.