Women’s quota Bill will put TMC in a tricky spot :::: Nationally, Modi has consistently polled strongly among women voters, this time BJP wants to hurt Mamata the most

Women’s Quota Bill: Modi Pushes 33% Reservation, Sets April 16-18 Discussion

To corner TMC, the BJP will highlight some of the controversial remarks of Mamata Banerjee vis-a-via women safety.

On one occasion, she said one rape incident happened with a medical student of a private college. "How do they (she meant the victim) came out in the night at 1230... and it happened, so far I know, in the forest area".

 

The BJP has always fought clinically to win women’s hearts and votes.  

Its much touted 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (“save the girl child, educate the girl child”), and other women-orientated schemes had “gone beyond tokenism” to help achieve gender equality. 

PM Narendra Modi has rightly used the Cooch Behar rally on Sunday (April 5) to make a strong pitch for women’s empowerment — a politically significant move ahead of the West Bengal elections, given that women voters have long formed a formidable support base for Mamata Banerjee.

“We want the role of daughters to increase. Hence, in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, we made a law for 33 per cent reservation,” said Modi, adding that the Women’s Reservation Act would be implemented from 2029 onwards. “The Women’s Quota Bill has been held up for 40 years and cannot be stalled any longer,” he declared, announcing that discussions on the matter are scheduled for April 16, 17, and 18.

Modi's Popularity ? ::: Seeing is Believing 

The women’s quota issue certainly put the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC in a tricky spot — the party can neither oppose it without alienating its women voter base, nor claim credit for legislation passed under the BJP-led regime.

Nationally, Modi has consistently polled strongly among women voters. 

After the BJP’s sweeping victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, a senior journalist-turned-BJP leader noted: “This figure is not possible without Muslim — especially women — backing BJP and NDA candidates.”

The Congress-led UPA was left embarrassed badly in 2012 when younger, educated Indian women had refused to be stay quiet ever since huge protests erupted across the country following the gang rape of Jyoti Singh in Delhi.  The victim later died in a Singapore hospital while being treated. 

A fast track court in Delhi in September 2013 later sentenced four men to death by hanging, for the rape and subsequent death of the young medical student in a case that sparked nationwide outrage.

The court had said the details of the case, in which the four men were accused of raping and violating the victim with a steel pipe qualified as the “rarest of the rare” situations that warranted the death sentence, adding that society should have “zero tolerance” for such a brutal crime.  

Safety of girls has been a major concern. In fact, the BJP did work hard in Haryana on this front. 

The girls are most often discriminated against even before they are born, with aborted female foetuses one of the most unacknowledged acts of violence. As a result, there was a drop in the female sex ratio at birth in 17 out of 21 states. After PM Modi's personal intervention, the situation has now changed in one of the worst affected states Haryana.  

The Modi Govt did also abolish Triple Talaq and this was also a landmark decision often upsetting BJP's detractors. 

Working on the women-related issues has always helped the BJP expand its base in various states across India. 

In the process, the BJP has also able to achieve one major milestone.  

Several regional parties across India have been marginalised since 2014. They include Samajwadi Party, RJD, NCP, even CPI-M and CPI, Janata Dal (U), Shiv Sena, Biju Janata Dal, BRS. 

As a result most of the space left by these parties have been taken by the BJP. 

Is TMC’s “Jabar Bela” -- time to go finally here?  And the Team Modi is determined to make women folk instrumental in getting rid off Mamata from the seat of throne in West Bengal. 

Mamata with Pranab Mukherjee : Those were the days 

The RG Kar rape in 2024 exposed the typical 'Maha Jungle raj' elements in Mamata Banerjee's administration. 

In 2025, a political uproar erupted over the comments of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee when she suggested women should not go out at night. 

She was interacting with the media persons, on the alleged gang rape of a second year private medical college MBBS student in Durgapur . 

On another occasion, the Union Minister and BJP leader Sukanta Majumdar had blasted Mamata Banerjee over 'shifting the blame' to the private college vis-a-vis women safety, barely a year after the RG Kar incident where a medical college student was raped and murdered.

 

On the larger landscape, analysts say the BJP had their vote-based enhanced with the support of women irrespective of caste, creed and religion because the women voters too see Narendra Modi as a strong Prime Pinister.

They see him as someone who not only can keep the Pakistanis in their place or keep Indian borders secure but someone who crushed Naxalism. Home Minister Amit Shah has also highlighted in the Lok Sabha how Maoists often picked up female children at the age of seven or eight or handed them guns. 

This school of thought also dismiss reports of the so-called lynching of Muslims, and describe other attacks against minorities as being grossly exaggerated by the anti-Modi media. 

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