‘You’ll have no place to hide’, p 22

New Delhi: Home Minister Amit Shah Strongly defended the delimitation proposal on Friday, saying the current cap on the number of Lok Sabha seats since 1976 is a violation of the constitutional principle of “one person, one vote, one value”, reports Kumar Rakesh. He said that the number of voters in many seats has increased so much that an MP cannot do justice to his seat.He also rejected the allegation that the Women’s Reservation Bill is a ploy to delay the caste census. He said, “PM Modi had anticipated that doubts would arise and hence he approved the caste census from the Union Cabinet. This time there will be a column for caste in the enumeration process.”Responding to the debate on constitutional amendment bills for women’s reservation and delimitation, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said the two primary reasons behind the bills are to ensure time-bound implementation of women’s reservation by 2029 and to implement the idea of ​​”one person, one vote, one value” in the true spirit.The Malkajgiri Lok Sabha seat in Telangana has more than 39 lakh voters, Shah said, emphasizing that 127 constituencies have more than 20 lakh voters. He rejected the opposition’s charge that delimitation would result in the southern states losing importance in the Lok Sabha. On average, a Lok Sabha seat in the South has far fewer voters than in the North.On caste reservation, Shah said, “The BJP government will run as per the collective spirit of the Parliament. There should be no doubt about it.” He said that for the BJP, representation and participation of the people of the country (in the legislatures) is most important, showing a rare willingness to engage on the issue.However, he rejected the quota for Muslims and said it violated the Constitution. “We will not allow anyone to implement this.”Taking an aggressive stance on women’s quota, the Home Minister, as the Prime Minister had said on Thursday, warned the opposition of a strong reaction. “If you do not vote in support of the Bill, it will fall, but the women of the country are watching who stands in their way. You will have no place to hide in the elections. The Opposition will have to face the wrath of women not only in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections but at every level, in every election and everywhere.” Later, he took to Twitter to scold the opposition for celebrating the defeat of the bills.The most dramatic moment during his reply came when he accepted Congress MP KC Venugopal’s demand that it be written in the bill that seats in every state would increase by 50%. However, he quickly rejected Venugopal’s other demand to delimit the Women’s Reservation Bill, saying it is a “tempting trap” to deny women quota in 2029.He took on Rahul Gandhi’s claim of Congress being a supporter of the OBC issue. Listing decisions like not implementing Kalelkar Commission recommendations for OBC reservation under Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi not acting on Mandal Commission recommendations and Rajiv Gandhi opposing it, Shah said, “Congress is the most anti-OBC party.”He said, Congress has never made any member of the OBC community the Prime Minister, whereas BJP has given the country a Prime Minister from an extremely backward caste in the form of Modi.Recalling the opposition party’s stand on the Shah Bano verdict and triple talaq, he said the Congress and its allies in the Indian camp have a history of rejecting the legislative proposal for reservation five times since the idea was first introduced during the PV Narasimha Rao government, and at times it has depended on its allies to defeat the proposal. He said the Congress has clearly opposed all the signature initiatives of the Modi government – from scrapping special status for Jammu and Kashmir to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.