Priyanka Gandhi sees Amit Shah ‘laughing’ during women quota speech, says ‘Chanakya aaj agar zinda hote...’

Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi struck a lighter note with Union Home Minister Amit Shah during her speech on women's reservation and the Constitutional Amendment bill in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.

Not missing a beat, Gandhi paused her Lok Sabha address to point out Amit Shah "laughing" during her remarks.

"Griha mantri ji hass rahe hai...Puri yojana bana rakhi hai. Chanakya aaj agar zinda hote to vo bhi chauk jaate apki rajnaitik kutilta pe...," she told Shah mid-speech.

Her statement roughly translates to: "The Home Minister is laughing...he's already planned it all. If Chanakya were alive today, he would be shocked by your political cunning."

She made the comments while highlighting several issues with the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill that seeks to tweak the women's quota law.

"On one hand, they talk about women's reservation, and on the other, they are snatching away the rights of the OBC community in a secretive way, and weakening the power of some states by destroying democracy, and to strengthen their party for the next elections," Priyanka Gandhi said in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.

She said the "debate is not on the women's reservation". Rather, the Opposition is questioning why the government wants delimitation on the basis of the Census 2011.

"It was written in the [women's reservation] law that it will be implemented only after the Census is conducted across the country. But what changed suddenly? Why does the same government now want to move ahead with the old Census?, and why so much hurry?," she asked

Priyanka Gandhi contended that the new Census would have revealed the exact number of OBC currently residing in the country. "It would reveal how big this community is," she said.

She also questioned why there's no process to implement the women's reservation and delimitation in the amended bill.

Priyanka Gandhi further said the Prime Minister “spoke only half the truth”.

“He told the House that there was opposition, but did not clearly state who actually opposed it. He said there was opposition, but did not specify by whom. In reality, it was you, the BJP, who opposed it. A few years later, under the leadership of former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, the Congress government passed this law in Parliament and implemented it,” she said on Thursday.

Two ordinary bills – the Delimitation Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill to implement the proposed amended women's-quota law in the Union territories of Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir -- were also introduced in the House.

While introducing the bill, Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal says, “The women’s reservation bill was passed in 2023, providing for implementing its provisions based on census after 2026 and delimitation.”

He said, "There will be an equal, 50 per cent increase in the strength of Lok Sabha members, and this will translate to 815 seats, of which 272 will be reserved for women, which comes to one-third of the strength of the House. There will be no loss to anyone (states), and they will retain their strength."