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Saturday, July 25, 1998

Sushma blames Opposition for stalling Women's Bill

EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE  
CHANDIGARH, July 24: The Women's Reservation Bill may not be introduced in the current session of Parliament, which is to end next week, Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj said here today.

Participating in a ``meet the press''programme in the Chandigarh press club, she charged the Congress with having gone back on the Bill.

The government not only wanted to introduce the Bill, but also have a discussion on it in the current session, she said adding the pandemonium created by RJD and Samajwadi Party stalled introduction of the Bill.

Answering a question she said the BJP Government would not like to misuse Article 356. ``We would not hesitate to use it if the situation so warranted'', she added. She denied BJP was trying to pressurise other alliance partners. ``We have very good relations with all partners, incbluding Akalis and Jayalalitha'', she said.

She said the Bills for formation of three new states Chattisgarh, Uttaranchal and Vananchal would soon be sent to the President afterfinalisation by the Union Cabinet while the Bill for granting full statehood to Delhi would be introduced in the Parliament.

Inclusion of Udham Singh Nagar district in proposed Uttaranchal state would benefit people due to geographical reasons, Swaraj said adding efforts were on to convince Akalis on this.

Referring to Haryana, she said there was no tension between the HVP and the BJP and she was not interfering in Haryana's affairs.

Earlier, Sushma said India will counter Pakistan's propaganda through the audio-visual media, for which it has formed a high-level group which has already become functional.

The minister also disclosed that it would be mandatory for all foreign channels to uplink their programmes through India and that all Indian laws would be enforced on them then, which will help check vulgarity in their editorial contents as well as advertisements.

While this would be done through the Broadcasting Bill, to be tabled in the next session of Parliament, she further disclosed that theBill will also have a Broadcasting Council which will provide a forum to the public for airing their grievances against obscenity, vulgarity and quality of programmes beamed by satellite channels.

She added that a Broadcasting Council would also form part of the Broadcasting Bill, which would provide a forum to the public for airing their grievances against obscenity, vulgarity and quality of programmes.

Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.


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