Srinagar, Dec 12: In a significant development, the Lok Sabha on Tuesday cleared a bill to reserve 33 percent seats for women in the Legislative Assembly of Jammu & Kashmir Union Territory.
The Lok Sabha today passed The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Second Amendment) Bill- 2023 to provide 33% reservation for women in the assembly of the UT.
The proposed legislation, a copy of which is in possession of news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), states that it will come into effect only after an exercise of delimitation is undertaken after the Government of India publishes its next census, the date for which has not been set.
It means that the bill would become operationalise only after 2029.
Interestingly, the bill wouldn’t affect the powers of Lieutenant Governor to nominate two members to the Legislative Assembly, if in his opinion, women are not adequately represented in the House. The provision empowering the LG to nominate two women as MLAs has not been scrapped from The Jammu & Kashmir Reorganisation Act-2019.
The bill was being brought as “The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Amendment) Bill-2023, cleared by the Parliament in September this year for granting political reservation to women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies, was not applicable to the Assembly of Jammu & Kashmir.
—(KNO)
