In July this year, the 17th amendment to the Constitution was approved in parliament with a provision to extend the tenure of the 50 reserved seats for women for 25 more years. What's your view on this?

This is a very unfortunate development in our politics. We have been advocating for holding direct elections for the reserved seats for women for many years. Increasing the number of reserved seats and restructuring the constituencies are also among our demands. But to our astonishment, the draft bill was approved by the cabinet, on January 29, 2018, with a provision to extend the tenure of the 50 reserved seats for 25 more years. This was done without any discussion on the issue in parliament or any other platforms. And later, on July 8, the bill was passed in parliament. The manner in which this has been passed, without any regard for the legitimate demands for reforms in the bill, is really surprising.

This bill has come at a time when we are celebrating women's achievement in all spheres of society. There are many success stories: our women have scaled the Everest, our girls' cricket team have won international cricket matches and brought honour for the country, and for the first time in the country, a woman has been appointed to the rank of a major general. Women have been joining the most challenging professions such as journalism, law enforcement agencies, peace keeping forces, etc.—breaking the social taboos.

Against this backdrop, the passing of the 17th amendment to the Constitution came as a shock to us as this is contradictory to the ideals of women's political empowerment. It also contradicts the promises made by the government as well as the National Women Development Policy and the CEDAW convention. Instead of empowering women, this law will further weaken the process of women's political empowerment. Women in the reserved seats will become further marginalised as they will not have any specific roles and responsibilities. They won't be able to build up their own constituencies without participating in direct elections.

Although there is no legal barrier for women to participate in the national elections from the 300 general seats, given the patriarchal character of our political parties, it is quite difficult for women