Lucknow, Sept 21 (IANS): The Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal have demanded that the provision for women’s reservation should be made applicable in the run-up to 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the assembly elections in five states scheduled to be held later this year.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav accused the BJP led-NDA of starting the functioning of the new Parliament building with a ‘blatant lie’ in the form of women’s reservation bill.

“When everyone was aware that it would take years to implement this bill, then what got the BJP government to lie before the women of India by pushing this issue forward. The BJP government is neither in favour of census nor caste census. Without it, the bill cannot be implemented,” he said adding that if the intentions were clear, the provisions of the bill should be implemented soon.

Akhilesh Yadav said it will take decades for the bill to be implemented and described it as a joke on women over a serious issue like reservation.

RLD spokesperson Anil Dubey said that RLD founder and former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh had advocated reservation for women in Parliament and Assembly in 1977. Dubey said the BJP government took nine years to bring the women’s reservation bill.

"They are bringing it to gain benefit in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. If their intention is clean then women should be given the benefit of this reservation in the upcoming Lok Sabha and Assembly elections," he said.

SP Rajya Sabha MP Ram Gopal Yadav said, “We are hopeful that sooner or later, there will be a majority of these neglected sections of the society and communities in Parliament and we will be able to ensure justice to backwards, Dalits and minorities then.”