India parliament reserving third of seats for women

A landmark law passed by India's parliament expands the number of women members to 30 percent from the current 13 percent.

The country's upper house passed on Thursday the bill reserving a third of seats in the national and state legislatures for women. The lower house passed its version a day earlier.

All the 215 members of the upper house present voted for the measure brought by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.

"A defining moment in our nation's democratic journey!" Modi said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, soon after.

The bill was first introduced in 1996 but only gathered support across most political parties lately.

Just 104 of India's 788 members of parliament were women after the last national election, according to government figures — a little over 13 percent.

Those figures reflect a broader under-representation of women in Indian public life. Just under a third of working-age Indian women were in the formal labor force last year, according to government data.

The quota will take effect only once India redraws its electoral boundaries after the mammoth undertaking of a census for its 1.4 billion people — the last one, due in 2021, was postponed indefinitely because of the coronavirus pandemic.

That means it may not be in place until at least the end of the decade.

WITH AFP