India pledges women-only seats in national and state parliaments

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'India's new Congress-led coalition government is to press for a radical new law to reserve a third of the elected seats in parliament and in state legislatures for women.

The government has also pledged to introduce a bill which will set aside half the seats in elected village councils and city municipalities for women. At present only a third of the seats in village councils are kept exclusively for women.

India's first woman president, Pratibha Patil, announced the ground-breaking steps at the opening session of the new parliament in Delhi today. She also promised on behalf of prime minister Manmohan Singh's re-elected government that more women would be employed by the central government.

A National Mission on Empowerment of Women will also be set up to implement "women-centred" welfare programmes.

"My government will initiate steps within the next hundred days on these measures," she said.'