Demand for implementing women's reservation bill in 2024 Lok Sabha polls politically motivated: Anurag Thakur

Shimla: The demand for implementing women's reservation bill in 2024 Lok Sabha polls by the Congress and some other parties is "politically motivated" and an attempt to defeat its purpose, said Union minister Anurag Thakur on Tuesday.

"These parties are aware that neither census nor delimitation has been done and any person can go to the court and get the process stalled," he told reporters here.

Replying to a question whether the NDA is becoming weak with allies like AIADMK quitting the alliance, the information and broadcasting minister said JD(S) and some other parties are joining the ruling alliance which is strong and will win the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Thakur said that the women's reservation bill brought during the Congress-led UPA rule was opposed by its constituents like Samajwadi Party and RJD.

"These parties are not in favour of reservation for women but cannot oppose the bill openly and are trying to raise frivolous demands like implementing it from 2024 and giving reservation to Other Backward Classes (OBCs)," he said.

The delimitation is done by the Delimitation Commission in an impartial manner and elections with 33 per cent reservation for women can be held only after delimitation, he added.

The Congress and some other parties like AAP have demanded that the government implement the women's reservation bill without delay. The bill to reserve one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women received the parliamentary nod last week.

Thakur, who also holds the portfolio of youth affairs, was here to attend the 9th Rogzar Mela. He gave appointment letters to 110 youths for government jobs and lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi for launching the programme for giving jobs to 10 lakh people.

The Mudra, Start-up India and Stand up India schemes launched by the Modi government have been very successful and loans worth Rs 34 crore were disbursed without any guarantee under Mudra Yojana for self employment, he said.

On the AIADMK quitting the NDA, Thakur said the NDA always gave importance to its allies and treated them like family, asserting that the alliance won 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls and would win with a huge majority in 2024 elections also.

On the visa row with China, Thakur said that China should not have denied visa to three sportspersons from Arunachal Pradesh for 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou as per the Olympic Charter and it was the responsibility of Olympic Committee of Asia to take up the issue.

"China's attitude was not proper and the discrimination towards our players was not acceptable," he said, reiterating that Arunachal is an integral part of India.