Gender parity in panchayats now

NEW DELHI: Offering more power to the fairer sex may still be a pipe dream at the national level, but the UPA government on Thursday nevertheless took a major step towards gender equality by approving 50% reservation for women in panchayats.

Taking a leaf out of Bihar���s book where CM Nitish Kumar pioneered the empowerment of women at the grassroots in 2005 by being the first to give them equal representation in village panchayats ��� a move that paid his party rich dividends in the 2009 LS poll ��� the Centre will now replicate the Bihar model for local bodies across the country.

The proposal cleared by the Cabinet on Thursday entails amendment to Article 243D of the Constitution to raise the one-third reservation provided to women in panchayats to 50%. With this, a key promise made in President Pratibha Patil���s recent Independence Day eve speech will stand fulfiled.

Obviously, the ruling Congress hopes to ride on the feel-good factor to be created by the UPA government���s decision to reserve 50% of the panchayat seats for women and win the coming polls in Haryana and Maharashtra and later in Jharkhand.

Apart from Bihar, the other three states that are already implementing gender equality at the panchayat level are Uttarakhand (where the quota of seats for women is a whopping 55%), Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. It be recalled that the states have the power to bring in amendments in their state laws to increase women���s representation up to 50%.

Rajasthan has also announced 50% reservation that will be implemented in the next panchayat election in early 2010. On Wednesday, Kerala announced 50% reservation for women in panchayats and other local bodies. Bihar was the first state to offer 50% reservation to women in panchayats in 2005.

Welcoming the central move for empowerment of women at the grassroots, CPM leader Brinda Karat demanded that the government show the same seriousness towards the Women���s Reservation Bill. ���It was also part of the 100-day promise. What happened to that,��� she asked.