The BRICS TimesUnion Minister Kiren Rijiju has claimed that Congress MP Shashi Tharoor during a casual post-session chat in Parliament indirectly admitted that his own party holds an anti-women stance. The remark came in the heated context of the Women’s Reservation Amendment Bill being defeated in the Lok Sabha.
Rijiju Drops a Political Bombshell After Parliament Session
Union Minister Kiren Rijiju has made a striking claim Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, in a candid corridor chat after Parliament adjourned, indirectly acknowledged that the Congress party is anti-women. Rijiju shared this account during a media interview, pointing to a conversation that took place after the special Parliament session concluded. The session had been convened to pass the Women’s Reservation Amendment Bill a bill that ultimately failed to clear the Lok Sabha.
According to Rijiju, Tharoor walked up to him after the session ended and said something telling. “Shashi Tharoor said to me after the Parliament session ended, that Congress may be anti-women, but no woman would consider Shashi Tharoor anti-women. I replied that yes, I agree that no one would call you anti-women, but your party is anti-women… He also accepted in a way that Congress is anti-women,” said Rijiju.
What Tharoor Actually Posted on X
Tharoor, for his part, shared a picture on X formerly Twitter from the same post-session gathering. He posed alongside a few opposition MPs and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Rijiju inside the Lok Sabha. Tharoor wrote in his post: “A little post-adjournment gathering of Opposition MPs in the Lok Sabha with our charming Parliamentary Affairs Minister. When Kiren Rijiju explained why he & his party were calling the Opposition ‘mahila virodhi’, it was pointed out to him that no one could ever call me anti-women!”
Tharoor also added in the post that women whom he called ‘Humans 2.0’ clearly deserve strong representation in Parliament and in every major institution. However, he issued a sharp warning he urged the government not to link women’s advancement to what he described as a “mischievous and potentially dangerous” delimitation proposal one that he believes could badly damage Indian democracy.
BJP Piles On Calls Out Congress’s “Hypocrisy”
BJP leader CR Kesavan wasted no time jumping in to support Rijiju’s interpretation. He argued that Tharoor’s remark however casually made actually rips the mask off Congress’s long-standing double standards on women’s empowerment. Kesavan argued that for the Congress party, women’s empowerment is reserved only for the Gandhi family pointing to the fact that both Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra hold seats in Parliament.
“A Congress Working Committee member and senior leader conceding that the Congress party is anti-women completely unmasks the hypocrisy of the Congress party. For the unprincipled Congress party, women empowerment is only applicable to only their first family, both Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra are members of Parliament [100% reservation] while the Congress party betrays the cause of women empowerment by backstabbing the 33% reservation for women in Parliament and State Assemblies. The Congress party never cared nor bothered to enact women’s reservation the 60 years it was approximately in power at the Centre. On the contrary Congress inflicted injustice and disempowered women’s rights by regressively overturning the Shah Bano verdict,” Kesavan said.
The Bill That Started It All
The Women’s Reservation Amendment Bill formally the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill sought to implement 33% reservation for women in Parliament and state assemblies. The bill proposed increasing Lok Sabha seats from 543 to 816, with the expansion tied to a delimitation exercise based on the 2011 Census. The government convened a special three-day sitting from April 16 to 18 specifically to push this legislation through.
On April 17, the bill went to a vote and fell short. A total of 298 members voted in favour while 230 voted against. The bill needed a two-thirds majority to pass as a constitutional amendment a threshold it did not cross. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla formally announced its defeat. Following this outcome, Rijiju stated that the government would not proceed with the two remaining interlinked bills.
Congress Defends Its Stand Calls It a Win for Democracy
Congress pushed back firmly after the bill’s defeat. The party insisted the opposition had not voted against women it had voted against a dangerous and “nefarious” attempt by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to link women’s reservation to a divisive delimitation exercise. Tharoor himself called it “a convincing victory” for the opposition saying the BJP fell 52 votes short of the required two-thirds majority.
“It is not a vote against women’s reservation, but against delimitation and the mischief that delimitation and the dramatic expansion of Parliament would do to our democracy, so we voted to save our democracy,” Tharoor told ANI. He further said the opposition had made clear during debates that it would vote in favour of women’s reservation but only if it were delinked from delimitation.
BJP Warns Women Voters Will Remember This
Rijiju, meanwhile, hit back hard saying it was “unimaginable” that parties like Congress, TMC, and the Samajwadi Party would oppose a bill meant to benefit women. He said the government had already defined a clear roadmap for women’s reservation through the 2023 Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam. “Who would think that someone would vote against women?” he asked pointedly. Home Minister Amit Shah echoed the sentiment warning that women voters across the country would hold the opposition accountable in 2029.
