Delimitation needed to preserve one vote, one value: Amit Shah in Lok Sabha | India News
New Delhi: Home Minister Dr Amit Shah Friday strongly defended the delimitation proposal, saying the current freeze on Lok Sabha seats since 1976 violated the constitutional principle of “one person, one vote, one value”, reported Kumar Rakesh. He said that the number of voters in many constituencies had increased so much that an MP could not do justice to his constituency.He also denied allegations that the Women’s Reservation Bill was a ploy to delay caste enumeration. “Prime Minister Modi could foresee that doubts would arise, and therefore, got the Union Cabinet to approve the caste census. This time the enumeration exercise will have a column for caste,” he said.Responding to the controversy over the constitutional amendment bill for women’s reservations and restrictions, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said the two primary reasons behind the bills were to ensure a time-bound rollout of women’s reservations by 2029 and to implement the concept of “one person, one vote, one price” in true spirit.Shah said that Telangana’s Malkajgiri LS constituency has over 39 lakh voters, asserting that 127 constituencies have over 20 lakh voters. He rejected the opposition’s allegation that southern states would get less weightage in the LS as a result of the restriction. On average, an LS constituency in the South has far fewer voters than in the North.Referring to caste quota, Shah said, “The BJP government will run in the collective sense of the Parliament. There is no doubt about that.” For the BJP, representation and participation in the country (in legislatures) is paramount, he said, marking a rare willingness to engage in the matter.However, he canceled the quota for Muslims, saying it is a violation of the constitution. “We’re not going to let anyone implement it.”Striking a defiant note on the women’s quota issue, the home minister, like the prime minister, on Thursday warned of a backlash from the opposition. “If you don’t vote in support of the bill, it will go down, but the women of the country are seeing who stands in their way. You will have no place to hide in the elections. The opposition will face the wrath of women, not only in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, but at every level, in every election and everywhere.” Later, he goes to X to berate the opposition for celebrating the bill’s defeat.The most dramatic moment during his reply came when he accepted Congress MP KC Venugopal’s demand in the bill to increase seats by 50% in each state. However, he rejected Venugopal’s other claim that the Women’s Reservation Bill be excluded from the statute of limitations, saying it was a “tempting trap” to deny women quota in 2029.He took note of Rahul Gandhi’s claim that the Congress was a supporter of the OBC cause. “Congress is the most anti-OBC party,” Shah said, listing decisions like non-implementation of Kalelkar Commission recommendations for OBC reservation under Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi not acting on Mandal Commission recommendations and opposing Rajiv Gandhi.The Congress has never made a member of the OBC community the Prime Minister while the BJP in Modi has given the country a Prime Minister from an extremely backward caste, he said.The Congress and its allies in the India bloc have a history of rejecting the legislative proposal for conservation five times since the idea was first mooted during the PV Narasimha Rao government, and it has at times leaned on its allies to sink the proposal, he said while recalling the opposition’s stand on the Shah Bano tripartite verdict. He said the Congress has opposed all the Modi government’s signature initiatives – from scrapping special status for J&K to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
