By Our Reporter
Shillong: The State Commissions of the various Northeastern states would be making a concerted effort to ensure implementation of the 33 per cent reservation for women in Assemblies and the Parliament.
The State Women Commissions has called for the joint efforts in view of the dismal number of women representatives in the Legislative Assemblies of the Northeastern states.
As per the 2001 Census, there are around 3.80 crore women voters in all the seven Northeastern states. Despite the huge population there are only 21 women legislators in the seven Legislative Assemblies in the region out of a total of 466 representatives.
Assam tops the list with 14 women legislators followed by Communist Tripura which has three women MLAs (Gouri Das, Rita Kar (Majumder) and Bijita Nath). In Arunachal Pradesh, Karya Bagang (Trinamool Congress) and Nang Sati Mein (Independent) are the two women legislators.
Meghalaya (M Ampareen Lyngdoh, Congress) and Manipur (Contd on P-10)
Demand raised for…
(Contd from P-1) (Okram Landhoni Devi, Congress), which had gone for polls on January 28, have one woman legislator each.
Incidentally, there is no representation of the fairer sex in the Mizoram and Nagaland Assemblies.
“It is pretty sad for the past many years we have not had any women legislator. This is a clear indication that there is gender discrimination when it comes to women in politics,” Chairperson of Mizoram State women’s Commission, Lalnipuii, told reporters on the sideline of a two-day conference organised by the National Mission for Empowerment of Women in the city on Tuesday.
“We have to jointly come together to fight for the implementation of the 33 per cent reservation in order to have more women representation in the State Assemblies and Parliament,” Lalnipuii added.
Echoing the same views, Gumri Ringu of the Arunachal Pradesh State Women Commission said that even though the women have high status in the region but sadly there is limited women representation in the State Assemblies.
She also informed that two women legislators in Arunachal had to face discrimination as they had been denied tickets before the election by major political parties like the Congress.
It may be mentioned that the Women’s Reservation Bill, synonymous with the 33 per cent reservation, has been hanging fire for decades in Parliament due to absence of consensus among political parties.
It may be mentioned that the two-day conference which was inaugurated by State Social Welfare Minister JA Lyngdoh will deliberate on issues like economic empowerment (strategies for convergence), vulnerable and marginalised women, women’s education, women’s health and nutrition, access to justice, gender budgeting and gender mainstreaming among others.