GUWAHATI: Women power in Assam legislative assembly is set for a tremendous boost as their numbers will rise "as nearly may be" to 42 once the 128th Constitutional Amendment Bill, 2023, tabled in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday to reserve one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and all state legislative assemblies for women is passed and the delimitation exercise based on the first census is completed.
The 126-member Assam house currently has six women legislators. Similarly, among the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state, five will be reserved for women once the formalities are completed.
In the other northeastern states, the reservation will take up the number of women legislators to 20 each in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura and Meghalaya, all of which have a 60-member assembly, and to 14 in Mizoram assembly, which has a strength of 40 members. The quota will not apply to Rajya Sabha.
Currently Tripura has the highest women legislators - nine - in the region while Mizoram has none.
Until six months back, Nagaland was the only state that never elected a woman legislator ever since the first assembly polls in 1964.
Two women of the state - Hekani Jakhalu and Salhoutuonuo Kruse of the BJP's ally National Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) - scripted history in the last assembly election when they became the first two women to become MLAs in the state.
In Parliament, there are currently three women from the region in the Lok Sabha - one each from Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura while there is just one woman in Rajya Sabha - from Nagaland.
The statement of objects and reasons of amendment states, "In order to enable greater participation of women as public representative in policy making at state and national level, it is decided to introduce a fresh legislation for Constitutional amendment to provide for, as nearly as may be, one-third of total seats in the House of the People. the legislative assembly of every State and the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi to be reserved for women
Stay updated with the latest news on Times of India. Don't miss daily games like Crossword, Sudoku, Location Guesser and Mini Crossword. Prabin Kalita is a journalist at The Times of India and is curren...
Read MorePrabin Kalita is a journalist at The Times of India and is currently the Chief of Bureau (northeast). He has been reporting in mainstream Indian national media since 2001. He has been a field journalist reporting gamut of issues from India’s northeastern region and major developments in neighbouring countries like Myanmar, China, Bhutan and Bangladesh concerning India and northeastern region. He has been covering insurgency—internal and cross-border, politics, natural calamities, environment etc. He is a post-graduate in Geological Sciences from Gauhati University.
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