Srinagar: National Conference MP Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi on Sunday said the Constitution Amendment Bill could have led to concentration of legislative power within five Hindi-speaking states of the country if it would have been passed.
Talking to reporters during a constituency visit here, Mehdi said the Women’s Reservation Bill was unanimously passed by the parliament in 2023, but opposition has defeated a bill that could have led to a flawed delimitation process under the garb of implementing the women’s quota bill.
“The Women’s Reservation Bill is still alive… What has been defeated is a so-called delimitation bill that would have led to gerrymandering as they did in Jammu and Kashmir. They changed the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies as well as assembly segments along communal lines,” he said.
The MP from Srinagar Lok Sabha seat said the delimitation process that the government wanted to undertake would have led to an increase in the number of seats in states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
“These states would have got 400 seats and they could have taken decisions for the entire country, just like what they did with Article 370. Was it removed with the concurrence of people of Jammu and Kashmir? No. Similarly, this bill would have disenfranchised southern India, Bengal and other states in the Northeast,” he said.
While 298 members voted in support of the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 230 MPs voted against it. Out of the 528 members who voted, the Bill required 352 votes for a two-thirds majority.
The Bill proposed to increase the number of Lok Sabha seats to 816 from the current 543 to “operationalise” the women’s reservation law before the 2029 parliamentary polls, following a delimitation exercise based on the 2011 Census.
On Jammu and Kashmir government’s functioning, Mehdi said it seems that the present dispensation, which came to power on the promise of fighting for restoration of special status, has “stopped striving for even statehood”.
“People did not vote for restoration of statehood. We got the mandate for restoration of constitutional guarantees that were taken away from us. Even if we accept that argument of fighting for the achievable first, this government does not seem to be fighting for even statehood now.
“This, to me, is an injustice with the mandate of the people of Jammu and Kashmir,” he added.
