Geeta Mukherjee’s political career spanned about five and a half decades.
As the government introduced the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha, proposing one-third reservation for women, the name of Geeta Mukherjee resonated prominently during the discussions in the house.
Here are the five points on Geeta Mukherjee:
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She took a very important initiative in Indian politics by introducing the Private Member Bill in Parliament on September 12, 1996. Ms Mukherjee, as the Chair of the Joint Parliamentary Committee, conducted a comprehensive review of the 1996 bill and put forth seven recommendations. This is the fifth occasion when a bill to give reservations to women in Parliament and state legislatures has ben brought before Parliament.
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According to an old PTI report, Ms Mukherjee was born in Calcutta in 1924 and began her political career as a student leader in Jessore, now in Bangladesh, in the early 1940s. She was married to Biswanath Mukherjee, a prominent CPI leader, in 1942 and became a member of the Bengal state committee of the party in 1946. She was actively involved in the post-war students’ and workers’ upsurge against the British and was arrested and detained for six months in 1948.
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Geeta Mukherjee became a member of the West Bengal assembly in 1967 and remained till 1977. She was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1980 and represented the Panskura constituency until her death. She was also a member of the CPI’s National Council and National Executive Committee. Ms Mukherjee served on various parliamentary committees and a joint select committee on various bills relating to women. She was a strong advocate for women’s rights and social justice.
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Geeta Mukherjee authored several books in Bengali, like ‘Bharat Upakatha‘, ‘Chotoder Rabindranath‘ (children’s Rabindranath), ‘Hey Atit Katha Kao‘, and a translation of ‘Naked Among Wolves‘.
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Ms Mukherjee died of a heart attack in 2000 at the age of 76. She was a staunch advocate of the women’s reservation bill, and anguished by the government’s failure to pass it. Even in her last few years, she remained actively engaged in advocating for the bill, which aimed to provide 33 per cent reservation for women in both the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
