MUMBAI, June 15: As contretemps go, this one won't help resolve the debate over 33 per cent quota to women.

On Friday, a lady corporator was abused by a senior Congress-I member at a standing committee meeting at Navi Mumbai for daring to interrupt him while he was speaking. The Congressman's rebuke only reinforced, local feminists say, the myth about equality and they are now raising the question whether reservation alone can give them true equality.

Dnyaneshwar Patil, the district Congress chief, lost his cool and some of his political support when he asked committee chairman Vithal More to ``send out'' an independent corporator Sandhya Kousadikar from the meeting when he was delivering his speech on employing guards at crematoria. ``She should go out if she is not interested in listening to what I am saying,'' he said angrily after being interrupted several times by Kousadikar. At which she shot back asking the Congress leader: ``Tu kaun hai mereko bhagane wala (who are you to ask me to leave)?''At this, Patil turned to the chair and asked, ``Tumhi asa lokaana palun thevlet kaa, mazha virodh karnya sathee (Do you groom such people to oppose me?)'' The argument hereon deteriorated and despite More's pleas to calm down, Patil allegedly continued shouting as a stunned committee watched silently.

Later, Kousadikar said that Patil's outburst had been totally unwarranted. ``I did not interrupt his speech at all. I just said okay when a member made a suggestion. The tape recorded proceedings will bear me out,'' she claimed.According to her it is the responsibility of the chairman to take action or calm down members. ``Patil lost his cool and unleashed unparliamentary words against me,'' she alleged.

More, the arbiter, was rather hapless caught between the verbal crossfiring that was now transformed into a gender war. He told Express Newsline that Kosadikar was insulted by Patil who ``should not have uttered such words against a lady corporator and exercised restraint as a responsible leader of the Opposition. Such incidents are bound to bring a bad name to the civic body.''

Independent group leader Santosh Shetty, district Congress (I) vice-president, flashing a letter to Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee president said, ``We have urged the high command to take stringent action against Patil.''

Meanwhile, Kousadikar has now sought police protection fearing `threat to life from Patil.' The verbal onslaught, she claims has caused her `immense mental torture.' Her husband Dinkar Kousadikar, a practicing advocate, too has jumped into the fray and has declared that he would pursue all legal options to tackle the threat posed by Patil. A leading woman corporator of Congress, on condition of anonymity ``for obvious reasons'', admitted that ``the 33 per cent reservation for women in elected bodies will lose its meaning if we are cowed down.''

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.