Indian MPs reject draft of women's seat bill

His comments came a day after MPs fought tooth-and-nail in parliament to oppose the draft legislation.

"We are building consensus on the issue of reserving 33 percent of seats in parliament and state legislatures for women and I am confident that we will succeed," Singh told a national women's conference in New Delhi.

Successive Indian governments have failed to make the Women's Reservation Bill law since it was first put forward in 1996 because of stiff opposition from politicians. But Singh said he was confident of ending the logjam.

He said increasing female representation on village bodies was a signal to the political establishment to make way for women in state legislatures and parliament,

"A new army of empowered women has come forward to participate in governance at the community level and the time has come for us to scale this experiment up to the national level," he said.

"This large-scale mobilisation of women in the public life in our country is an unprecedented event. It is the most important intervention aimed at the empowerment of women anywhere in the world," Singh said.