Shashi Tharoor Links Centre's Proposed Delimitation With Demonetisation

New Delhi: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Friday linked the Centre's proposed delimitation to demonetisation and said it was brought in with a heist. Participating in a debate in the Lok Sabha on the three bills introduced for amendments in the women's quota law and setting up a delimitation commission, Tharoor said linking women's reservation with delimitation is to hold the aspirations of Indian women hostage to "one of the most contentious and complex" administrative exercises in the country's history.

"You have proposed delimitation with such haste, the same haste that you showed on demonetisation. Unfortunately, we all know what damage that did to the country. Delimitation could turn out to be political demonetisation. Don't do it," Tharoor said.

"Today we stand at a threshold where there is near-unanimous political consensus in favour of women's reservation. Every major party realises that the time for tokenism is over and the era of collective partnership must begin, and yet I am finding myself deeply perturbed by the legislative exercise before us," he said.

"The prime minister says he has brought 'nari shakti', the gift of justice, but he has wrapped it in barbed wire, tethering the implementation of women's reservation to the expansion of Parliament, to numbers from the 2011 census and an exercise of delimitation... Why must we entangle a moral imperative with a demographic minefield, he asked.

"What will be the Speaker's condition when there are 850 members? There is no corresponding proposal to increase the strength of the Rajya Sabha," he said.

"These are all problems that cannot be solved by a calculator. There is no harm in looking at international examples. This process cannot be done in a heist. The Prime Minister spoke passionately about the Nari Shakti, passed the amendment to the Women's Reservation Bill, and delimitation let us defer it," he said.

"Please be sensible with the larger interest of the country and not the short-term goals of a political party," the MP asserted. Women's reservation, he said, is ready for harvest and can and should be implemented immediately based on existing parliamentary strength.

"Delimitation is not a mere bureaucratic rearranging of maps; it is a profound shift in political power that is intended....Any delimitation exercise is fraught with complications that could tear at the very fabric of our federalism," he said.

The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill to tweak the women's quota law was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Thursday after a division of votes. Two ordinary bills -- the Delimitation Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill to implement the proposed amended women's quota law in Union territories of Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir -- were also introduced in the House.

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