Babu promises 50 pc quota for women in local bodies

Pointing out that his party has traditionally worked towards empowering women, Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu on Sunday said that half of the local bodies’ seats should be reserved for women.

Mr Naidu was speaking at a simple function at the NTR Trust Bhavan where former MLA Shobha Hymavathi took charge as the Telugu Mahila president, where he said that the TDP would give at least 50 per cent tickets to women to contest local bodies’ polls. He added that the TDP would strive for 50 per cent political reservation to women.

The former chief minister also reminded that TDP founder-president NT 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. Mr Naidu also reminded that NTR had also set up the Padmavathi University at Tirupati exclusively for women.

Mr Naidu further said that his regime had successfully implemented the 33 percent reservation for the 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 household which are being destroyed due to the rampant increase in the number of belt shops due to its flawed liquor policy. Mr Naidu said that was targeting liquor sales of up to Rs 40,000 crore so that it gets a revenue of Rs 15,000 crore in taxes, conveniently forgetting that rise in sales also mean rise in the number of consumers, effectively harming more number of women.

The former chief minister also said that the concept of DWCRA Groups was being diluted, while women in rural areas were being exploited by Microfinance Institutions.