Derek O’Brien on the TMC’s Role in Empowering Women

On International Women’s Day, I wish all the women of the country a very happy Women’s Day.

Here are a few points that makes the Trinamool Congress (TMC) stand apart when it comes to women empowerment:

• The average percentage of women Members of Parliament (MP) in the Lok Sabha, taking all the parties into consideration, is only 12 percent. When it comes to TMC, however, 34 percent party MPs in the Lok Sabha are women. According to Women’s Reservation bill, 1/3rd of the MPs should be women, but TMC has crossed that mark.
• According to central government rules, women get a maternity leave of six months. However, in the TMC government, women in West Bengal get a maternity leave of two years, spread over a period of time.
• For the Rashtriya Swasth Bima Yojana, a woman can be represented as a head of the family.
• For the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme of the central government, the budget for all states combined from the time it started is less than Rs 500 crore. West Bengal is the only state that has a budget of Rs 5,000 crore for the Kanyashri Yojana.

On that note, happy Women’s Day!

(The author is a Trinamool Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)