Geeta Mukherjee Committee (1996)
Topic: Gender, Religion and Caste in Politics · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
The Geeta Mukherjee Committee was a Joint Parliamentary Committee, a group of MPs from both Houses, set up in 1996. It examined the first women's reservation bill, the 81st Amendment Bill 1996. It supported reserving one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, with rotation, meaning the reserved seats change from one election to the next. It also suggested that reservation should later be extended to OBC women. This OBC question kept coming back in later debates.
Example
The demand for an OBC "quota within quota" was a key reason the 2008 women's reservation bill got stuck. The 106th Amendment of 2023 also has no OBC sub-quota.
Don't confuse with
- 106th Constitutional Amendment Act 2023: this is the law that was finally passed. The committee's report was only a recommendation on the 1996 bill, which never became law.
Related concepts
- Women's reservation in local bodies
- Women's Reservation Bill 2008
- 106th Constitutional Amendment Act 2023