Chandigarh, April 15 (IANS) Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Badal on Wednesday criticised the move on delimitation of Lok Sabha seats in the garb of the Women’s Reservation Bill, calling the population-based delimitation exercise “brazenly discriminatory against Punjab”.

He said his party favours an all-party initiative to oppose the delimitation move.

Elaborating on the discriminatory nature of the delimitation move, Badal, in a statement, said: “Punjab is predominantly a minority character state. We will be the biggest victim of this population-based delimitation. Compared with a nominal increase in seats for Punjab, Haryana will witness a nearly hundred per cent increase and double the number of its seats in the Lok Sabha.”

“Where does that leave us? We are already a victim of systematic discrimination and injustice.”

The Akali Dal President said that the delimitation move punished Punjab for following the national agenda on population control and rewarded states that defied those national goals.

In his strongly worded statement here, Badal also termed the move as a death blow to the already weakened federal structure in the country, saying, “this move is a conspiracy to hand over the control of India to just four Hindi heartland states — UP, MP, Bihar and Rajasthan –almost doubling their strength in the Lok Sabha and giving them a combined strength of over 40 per cent of in the Lok Sabha. This will render all other states virtually irrelevant”.

Badal, however, reiterated his party’s unequivocal support for the proposed Women’s Reservation Bill, saying that this was consistent with the vision and principles handed down to us by the great Guru Sahiban.

“SAD is strongly in favour of Women’s reservation. But we oppose the move to use it as a camouflage for the dangerous delimitation manoeuvres.”

About his party’s response to “the new challenge to our federal structure”, Badal said: “In the interest of true federal unity and integrity of the country, SAD will spearhead an all-party initiative in Punjab to oppose this assault on Punjab as well as on the federal structure of the country.”

He appealed to all political parties and all opinion makers and lovers of Punjab to support the SAD’s opposition to this attack on its democratic and federal rights and to strengthen the forces fighting for a genuinely federal structure in the country.

–IANS

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