Pointing out that his party has traditionally worked towards empowering women, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) President N Chandrababu Naidu on Sunday said that half of the local bodies' seats should be reserved for women.
Addressing a gathering at the NTR Trust Bhavan where former MLA Shobha Hymavathi took charge as the Telugu Mahila President, Naidu said that TDP will reserve at least 50% of the party's tickets for women to contest in the local bodies' polls.
The former Chief Minister also recalled that TDP Founder-President N T Rama Rao was the first leader who had called for reservations for women and had worked for empowerment of women by encouraging them to enter into politics. Naidu also said that NTR had also set up the Padmavathi University at Tirupati exclusively for women.
He further said that his regime had successfully implemented the 33% reservation scheme for women in education and employment sectors, besides providing jobs in APSRTC as conductors.
The former Chief Minister lamented the fact that the Congress government has forgotten the many households that are being destroyed due to the rampant increase in the number of belt shops due to its flawed liquor policy. He said that the Congress was targeting liquor sales of up to Rs. 40,000 crores so that it gets a revenue of Rs. 15,000 crore in taxes. In this process, the government is conveniently forgetting that rise in sales also means rise in the number of consumers, effectively harming more number of women, he added.
The former Chief Minister also said that the concept of DWCRA groups was being diluted, while the women in rural areas were being exploited by microfinance institutions.
Courtesy: INN
filed in:Congress, Shobha Hymavathi, Women Reservation