All-party meet fails to end impasse on women's bill

NEW DELHI: The effort to end the impasse over the Women's Reservation Bill has failed. The all-party meeting, held on Monday to pave the way for taking up the proposed legislation for consideration in Lok Sabha when Parliament meets on April 15 for the second part of the budget session, failed to reach a consensus.

The meeting, chaired by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is Leader of Lok Sabha, was attended by SP and RJD leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad, both of whom earlier said they would oppose the bill in its present form.

Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj, NDA convenor Sharad Yadav, Basudeb Acharia (CPI-M), Gurudas Dasgupta (CPI), Nageshwar Rao (TDP) and T R Baalu (DMK) were present.

Senior union ministers P Chidambaram, A K Antony, Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee, M Veerappa Moily, P K Bansal, Prithviraj Chavan and V Narayansamy attended the meeting.

Both SP and RJD have said they were not against reservation for women, but would insist on their stand of "reservation within reservation" for Muslim women and backward classes.

Rajya Sabha had last month passed the Constitution amendment bill providing for 33 per cent reservation for women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies.

The government is keen on pushing ahead the bill but is said to be averse to using force for the purpose because of the stature of the opponents.

In the Rajya Sabha, marshals were used to remove obstructing members but the decision drew severe flak.

The Law Minister had said last week that the government is going ahead with the bill in its present form in Lok Sabha and ruled out any changes in it.