Rising People’s Party termed chief minister Neiphiu Rio’s consultative meeting on reservation of women in urban local bodies as “uncalled for and tasteless”. No women in any capacity attended the meeting and the RPP said it cannot fathom “why this government is so bent on omitting women from any discussion pertaining to women’s reservation?”
By Imna Longchar, TFM Nagaland Correspondent
The “opposition-less government in Nagaland, earlier known as Nagaland United Government (NUG) and now rechristened as United Democratic Alliance (UDA) has once again come under public scanner. This followed reports of Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio holding a “secret meeting” with ENPO, CNTC, and TPO, on October 20 with regard to women’s reservation in the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs).
The Rising People’s Party (RPP) in a press statement said that there is a news report of Rio holding a consultative meeting with the civil society organisations in connection with the issue of reservation in ULB. Terming the meeting as “uncalled for and tasteless”, the RPP added that just by glancing at the news report, no women in any capacity attended the meeting and the RPP cannot fathom “why this government is so bent on omitting women from any discussion pertaining to women’s reservation?”
“It’s almost as if the UDA government is anti-women,” stated the RPP press statement while also questioning the government on the same issue when the latter had convened a consultative meeting on August 18 without a single woman participating in the discussion.
RPP said the party had reminded the government then that “women reservation is a complex subject which CSOs are ill-equipped to handle” and had called for broader discussion on the issue if the government was serious about women empowerment.
RPP had alleged that instead of seeking women’s (and experts) opinion on such a weighty
matter, the government apparently had convened a “secret meeting” and “sneakily” formed a committee comprising of the CS and representatives from ENPO, TPO and CNTC.
“The secretive manner in which a committee was formed without women representation clearly suggests that the chief minister has a hidden agenda. Secondly, this exercise is another irrefutable example of the Chief Minister indulging the CSOs because if the Chief Minister wants Naga CSOs to take decisions for the government, then there is no point in having an elected government”, read the press statement of the RPP.
Further, the RPP also was of the opinion that instead of inviting some of the “best minds” including scholars, academicians, think-tanks and the bar associations for thread-bare discussion, the chief minister had been divisive on it.