LS Speaker to inaugurate women lawmakers empowerment conference in Tirupati

Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh), Sep 13 (PTI) Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will inaugurate a two-day national conference of the Committee on Empowerment of Women Parliament and State and Union Territory Legislatures scheduled here from September 14.

A host of leaders, including Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh, Andhra Pradesh Governor S Abdul Nazeer, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and several others will attend the conference.

"Lok Speaker will chair the inaugural and concluding sessions (of the conference)," said Andhra Pradesh Legislature Secretary General Prasanna Kumar Suryadevara in an official release late on Friday.

According to Suryadevara, women's empowerment committee is a joint committee in the Parliament with 20 Lok Sabha members and 10 Rajya Sabha members.

Generally, he said a Lok Sabha member will chair this committee and Rajahmundry MP D Purandeswari is the current chairperson, and added that committees of this kind are existing in several state Legislative Assemblies and Councils.

Andhra Pradesh has a joint committee with three members from the Legislative Council and nine from the Legislative Assembly, which is chaired by G Charita Reddy, he added.

Suryadevara said respective state committees used to function within their purviews and used to visit other states to learn how they operate, and when given an opportunity they would deliberate in the visiting state's committees to increase awareness.

The Lok Sabha Speaker has started the initiative of convening all the committees from across the country in a particular state to deliberate on a particular subject, he said.

Under this initiative, this first meeting was held in Maharashtra on Estimate Committee two months ago, followed by an SC, ST Committee meeting in Bhubaneswar in August and the National Conference of the Committee on Empowerment of Women Parliament and State and Union Territory Legislatures is the third meeting in this series scheduled in Andhra Pradesh.

Suryadevara said Birla will deliver the inaugural address, followed by preliminary sessions which will take up two to three themes to discuss in depth.

As it is not viable for all the members of the committees from across the states to attend, he said the Lok Sabha Speaker called for the nomination of a four-member committee from each state.

Following the deliberations, he said the two-day conference will culminate with a declaration on September 15. PTI STH KH