New Delhi, May 6: A phalanx of women warriors today won the day for the government and their gender.

Rock solid in defence, they even managed to “spare the life” of a lunging male.

“Had I pushed him, there would have been byelections,” minister Renuka Chowdhury, more substantial than Kamal Akhtar, her adversary from the Samajwadi Party, later joked outside Parliament after she and some fellow women members had fought off a brawny bid to stop the women’s reservation bill from being tabled today.

The bill, which proposes setting aside 33 per cent seats for women in state legislatures and Parliament, partly addresses the concerns of many parties by including reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Its opponents, however, want sub-quotas also for Muslims and Other Backward Classes.

The battle is far from over but women members hailed the “victory”. The win, however, may not have been possible had Chowdhury, fellow ministers Ambika Soni and Kumari Selja and MPs Sayeeda Anwara Taimur, Kanimozhi and Supriya Sule not thrown a protective ring around law minister H.R. Bhardwaj in the Rajya Sabha.

Abu Asim Azmi of the Samajwadi Party, which opposes the bill, moved menacingly towards Bhardwaj as the law minister rose to introduce the bill.

But the government had anticipated the move. Surrounded by the well-prepared women MPs, the Samajwadi members couldn’t stop Bhardwaj from tabling the bill.

Chowdhury, the women and child development minister, took on three Samajwadi MPs who launched an attack from the rear. Unsuccessful in reaching Bhardwaj, one of them tore off what appeared to be papers listing House business for the day.

The bill was first introduced during the United Front’s tenure in 1996 in the Lok Sabha. Noisy protests disrupted the House when the bill was again tabled two years later.

“One member tried tearing it (the bill document) in 1998,” rural development minister and RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh recalled.

Singh’s party is opposed to a quota for women but kept out of the “war zone” today after the Congress agreed to discuss the RJD’s reservations.

Opponents of the bill accused the Congress of bringing it in through the “backdoor” by tabling it in the Rajya Sabha. As the Upper House does not get dissolved, the bill is here to stay and, as women MPs hope, eventually get enacted.

Azmi was unrepentant about trying to snatch the bill document from Bhardwaj. “It is my right and I will oppose it at every step,” he told reporters.