MPs remind Modi that BJP opposed women’s reservation in 1996 and 2010

“Hello, Swapan da, the link to your article "Women's Quota Bill restricts Democracy" is not working,” posted Md Zubair on X late on Saturday evening, referring to an opinion piece opposing women’s reservation in parliament and state legislatures. The article appeared in The Pioneer on 7 March, 2010, the post indicated. Swapan Dasgupta, former Rajya Sabha MP and a BJP candidate from the Rashbehari constituency in Kolkata in the West Bengal assembly elections in April 2026 is not the only BJP leader who had opposed women’s reservation.

There is a scramble among BJP heavyweights including Lok Sabha MP Tejasvi Surya and the party’s head of the IT cell Amit Malviya to delete their tweets opposing women’s reservation. It is particularly embarrassing in the wake of prime minister Narendra Modi blaming Congress and regional parties for opposing women’s reservation. Their old statements, tweets and articles are resurfacing and Md Zubair, co-founder of the fact checking outlet Alt News, posted how BJP’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya had deleted his ‘anti-reservation and anti-women’s reservation tweets’. In June, 2014 Tejasvi

Surya, not a MP then, had tweeted, ‘Dread d day when women’s reservation becomes a reality’. The tweet has since been deleted.

It was the BJP, recalled Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal, which had opposed the Women’s Reservation Bill in 1996. It opposed the ill on the ground that there was no OBC quota separately mentioned in the Bill, the MP recalled. Again in 2004, when NDA was in power, the BJP refused to accept support from the Congress to pass the women’s reservation bill. While several smaller and regional parties including the RJD and SP were opposed to the bill on the ground that it did not provide for adequate representation of OBC and Dalit women, the BJP and the Congress together had the majority to pass the bill. “…but BJP was not interested and spurned the offer”, Sibal recalled.

Once again in 2010 the bill was passed unanimously in the Rajya Sabha but in the Lok Sabha it got stalled because the BJP opposed it. The present Uttar Pradesh chief minister, then an MP, opposed the bill and quipped that women were better off doing household chores; if women got active in politics, who would take care of the household, he had said.

Describing the prime minister as a ‘pathological liar’, Congress Rajya Sabha MP tweeted after the PM’s address to the nation, “…His niyat is anything but saaf. It is poisonous. If one were to investigate his niyat, one only has to ask why the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 passed unanimously way back in September 2023 was notified only late night on April 16 2026 after a delay of 30 months. His talking of mahila samman is sheer hypocrisy given the way he has conducted himself throughout his life”.

“The prime minister ended his speech with saying that there was a ‘waqt ka intezaar’ for women’s reservation. There is no need for a muhurat to give India’s women their due. The Indian National Congress challenges the prime minister to move a bill in the Parliament tomorrow to implement women’s reservation within the existing set up of the Lok Sabha,” he added.