New Delhi, Jan 28: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday announced that it would set aside 33 per cent of the posts in the party’s organisational structure for women.

The BJP National Executive amended the party’s constitution to reserve 33 percent of the party’s post for women in presence of senior leaders L K Advani and Rajnath Singh.

“This will be implemented in three-months time from now, but the all powerful Parliamentary Board is exempted from the quota for women,” senior leader Sushma Swaraj told reporters here.

After the implementation of the decision, the 81-member National Executive of the party will have 27 women leaders and the chief of the national women cell of the party will also be a member of the Central Election Committee. The state presidents of the party will be part of their respective state election committees.

Swaraj also said that this move would be considered as “the first leap towards women’s reservation.”

“Whenever one would talk of women’s reservation the contribution of the BJP would be recorded undisputedly,” she added.

Talking about the women vote share in the recently held Gujarat Assembly polls, Swaraj said there was four per cent increase in women’s vote share, adding, “So by introducing this reservation the party will ensure that the women vote for the party surges ahead many fold.”

According to the adopted resolution, similar reservation will also be introduced in the quota of office bearers.

According to sources in the BJP, the move of reserving posts for women is not going down well within the party and it is being seen as a step to give posts to women relatives of senior leaders.

It must be recalled that the Congress Party had already implemented 33 per cent reservation at all levels of the organisations soon after Sonia Gandhi took charge of the party. (ANI)