Proposed legislative quota to boost women's participation

Hyderabad: Women representation for Andhra Pradesh will get a tremendous boost once the proposed measure reserving 33 per cent of parliamentary and state assembly seats to women deputies becomes a law.

At present, Andhra Pradesh has 36 women legislators in the state assembly and only four in the Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament).

The number of women legislators is expected to increase three-fold once the proposed quota comes into force.

With this the total number of reserved seats for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women will be nearly half of the total seats.

For instance 21 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats will be in the reserved quota.

Currently, 10 Lok Sabha seats are reserved for the SCs and the STs and three of these seats for women.

Now another 11 seats will be reserved for women. Thus, only 21 Lok Sabha seats will be in general category which anybody irrespective of caste can contest.

Similarly in the state assembly, of the 294 seats, 67 are already reserved for the SCs and STs and 22 of these seats are meant for women.

Under the 33 per cent quota rule, another 75 seats will be reserved for women and their total number in the state assembly will go up to 97 and total number of reserved seats will increase to 142 and only 152 seats will be in general category.