NEW DELHI, April 17 (Reuters) – An Indian government bill to expand assemblies that would have brought forward plans to reserve a third of the seats for women did not get enough votes to get through parliament on Friday.
Opposition groups said while they were in favor of quotas for women legislators, the linking of the plan to a mass redrawing of constituency boundaries was a government bid to manipulate the system and get more votes.
The government dismissed that accusation and said it would continue to campaign for women’s quotas. “The women of this country will not forgive you,” Interior Minister Amit Shah said in parliament, before the bill was put to a vote.
The government had argued the constituency changes were needed to reflect shifts in the population since seats were last fixed after a 1971 census.
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On Friday in parliament’s lower house, 298 lawmakers voted in favour and 230 against – far from the two-thirds majority needed for a bill that would have changed the constitution.