PESHAWAR: Former and present women legislators and political activists have demanded increase in reserved seats for women in parliament, provincial assemblies and local bodies.

Speaking at a consultative meeting to discuss `modalities for reserved seats` organised by Aurat Foundation and International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) here on Wednesday, they said amendments to relevant laws were needed to improve representation of women in parIlament on reserved seats.

Sadia Mumtaz of IFES called for proper legislation to increase number of reserved seats for women to ensure their equal representation in the assemblies.

The meeting also discussed different modalities and sought feedback of women politicians on how to effect changes in laws to allow increased representation of women in the legislative bodles.

Women politicians while sharing their experiences said that political parties often abused the quota of reserved seats for women as usually the family members or relatives were given priority over the genuine party workers when priority lists were prepared for selection of women on reserved seats.

Shagufta Malik of ANP, Shazia Tehmas of PPP, MPAs Uzma Khan of JUI and Amna Sardar of PML-N were among those who participated in the meeting.

`During my 33 years in politics, I have seen that women activists are only for raising slogans and holding gatherings. They are not given party tickets or preference on reserved seat list,` said a rather disgusted Nusrat Ara, who contested as an independent candidate from Mardan in the last general election after her party ignored her.

Saima Munir, programme manager of Aurat Foundation, said that women selected on reserved seats were often ignored by elected members since they didn`t have any constituency. `So there should be a mechanism of election on reserved seats to ensure that each woman on reserved seat had a constituency. This would help ensure she gained political recognition in a certain constituency,` she said.

The participants also stressed that there should be a certain criteria for those women who were brought on the priority list of a political party to ensure that political activist and not a relative of party leader made it to the assemblies on reserved seats.

Former provincial election commissioner from Balochistan Qazi Mohammad Saleem Akhtar, while speaking on the different local government systems being introduced in the four provinces, said that the local government system of 2001 was most favourable for women representation compared to the one introduced in 2013.