UP Assembly to earmark a day for women MLAs alone to raise issues

LUCKNOW: Women lawmakers in Uttar Pradesh will now have a full day kept exclusively for them to raise issues during the upcoming monsoon session of the Assembly. The decision was taken by Assembly Speaker Satish Mahan, who fixed a day when only women MLAs would get the floor of the House. The monsoon session begins on September 19.

“All women members will be given an opportunity to speak on the issues they want to after the question hour on the specified day,” Mahana said. His decision came after an interaction with the MLAs during which the women rued about not getting adequate opportunity to speak in the House. The UP assembly has 403 members, of which only 47 are women. The women MLAs, cutting across party lines, welcomed the initiative.

The BJP’s Rae Bareli MLA Aditi Singh, who earlier represented the Congress in Assembly, said that the initiative would ensure that women MLAs are heard patiently by their male counterparts. The only woman Congress MLA in the house, Aradhana Mishra ‘Mona’, said that the initiative would prove to be a trendsetter for the rest of the country. She added that in a patriarchal society where women face serious issues on several professional and personal fronts, this decision will help the women lawmakers express their thoughts without being interrupted.