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BJP endorses 33% reservation for women in party
Published on Sat, Sep 22, 2007 at 20:55 in Nation section
Tags: BJP, National Executive Meet , New Delhi
POLL PLANK: Advani says BJP will ensure compulsory ticket reservation for women.
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New Delhi: On the second day of the BJP National Executive meet, the party endorsed 33 per cent reservation for women.
The BJP national executive is discussing its resolution on Ram Sethu and fine tuning its strategy on what will be the party's main poll plank in the next general elections. Senior party leader Murli Manohar Joshi is introducing this resolution but CNN-IBN has learnt that the resolution is still open on just who will be the face of the party in this campaign.
The resolution only says that the party will give all support to RSS and VHP led Rameshwaran Ram Sethu Raksha Manch. The BJP is likely to demand an unconditional apology from the centre on the Ram Sethu controversy.
Seeking to reach out to women ahead of possible mid-term elections, BJP endorsed 33 per cent reservation for women at all levels within the organization with its National Executive giving green signal to the "historic" measure.
"It's a historic day for the party. National Executive today endorsed 33 per cent reservation for women in all bodies of the party. It will now be ratified by the National Council," senior party leader Sushma Swaraj said.
The saffron party's move assumes significance in view of the passage of women's reservation bill being delayed in Parliament.
She said the deliberations saw senior leader L K Advani favouring arrangements to ensure 33 per cent compulsory ticket reservation for women in every election by every party.
Taking a dig at the Congress and its leadership, Swaraj said that what was prevalent in the Congress was "fear" and not "reverence".
Incidently, BJP is the second major party after Congress to go in for such reservation. Swaraj said there was a vicious campaign to dub BJP as "anti-women" and the facts are otherwise.
Replying to a question, she suggested that the party was not eyeing the return of Uma Bharati saying, "there was enough women leaders in the party and there was no need to call someone back into the fold".
The report submitted by Sushma Swaraj in the National Executive today also comprised a comparison of the number of women ministers in the NDA and UPA regime.
"We had eleven women ministers in the NDA regime of which nine were from BJP. While in UPA there are only 10 ministers and only six are from Congress," she said.
"It was NDA and the BJP which have given maximum reservation to women in the history of the country," she claimed flaying the communist parties for "never having a women Chief Minister in its rule".
As per the new recommendation, the National Executive will have 27 women members out of the total 81 of which two seats each have been reserved for women from SC and ST community.
The committee comprised BJP Mahila Morcha Chief Kiran Maheshwari and leaders like Sumitra Mahajan, Najma Hepyullah, Bal Apte, Kiran Rijuju and Kishan Reddy.
With inputs from PTI
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This is a %22historic%22 step in true sense. Eventhough, its a symbolic measure, it will definetely change the face of
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