While the entire world is crying out over the ongoing war in West Asia, on the other hand, assembly elections are being held in five states of India, and the central Modi government has convened three special sessions of Parliament’s ongoing budget session from April 16 to April 18. This reflects the immense strength of India’s democracy, which was bestowed upon us by our freedom fighters through the Constitution. Starting today, this three-day session will begin, in which the Women’s Reservation Bill will be passed anew. This will be a constitutional amendment, requiring a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Parliament.
The ruling BJP-led Modi government is confident that major opposition parties in both Houses will also support it, because opposing a right granted to half the country’s population could push their political future into darkness. However, along with this bill providing 33 percent reservation for women in state assemblies and the Lok Sabha, two other bills will also be passed, related to constituency delimitation and Union Territories.
At present, both full-fledged states and Union Territories conduct their Lok Sabha elections in a coordinated manner. Elections will continue to be coordinated, but now a total of 35 Lok Sabha members will be elected from Union Territories, while 815 will be elected from states. Thus, the current strength of the Lok Sabha will increase from 543 to 850, which is 50 percent more than the current number. Out of these 850 members, reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will continue. Accordingly, within the 33 percent reservation for women, there will also be reserved quotas for women belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
However, some opposition parties are demanding that within the 33 percent reservation, women from Other Backward Classes (OBCs) should also receive a quota proportional to their population. The government is bringing a separate bill for delimitation, which will remove the condition that a Delimitation Commission must be formed after every decennial census to increase the number of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies based on population growth. The last delimitation in India was conducted after the 1971 Census, when the number of Lok Sabha seats was increased to 543. Since then, constitutional amendments have been enacted to freeze this number. The most recent such law was passed during the BJP-led NDA government under Vajpayee, which froze the number of seats for the next 20 years.
However, the demand for women’s reservation has been gaining momentum since the 1990s. As a result, from 1989 to 2010, several governments introduced this bill in Parliament multiple times, but each attempt remained incomplete—sometimes due to lack of majority in the Rajya Sabha, and at other times in the Lok Sabha. But under the Modi government, when the political will to implement it became strong, all obstacles were on the verge of being removed. In 2023, the Modi government succeeded in passing it in both Houses of Parliament, but added a condition that the reservation would be implemented only after a new census is conducted. Based on this, a Delimitation Commission would be formed to recommend an increase in the number of Lok Sabha seats.
The Modi government now seeks to remove this condition by introducing a new constitutional amendment. Accordingly, the new amendment proposes that the Delimitation Commission will carry out delimitation based on the most recent census available. The last census in India was conducted in 2011 during the tenure of the Manmohan Singh government. Therefore, the number of Lok Sabha members will now be increased to 850 on this basis, and this number will remain unchanged for the next 15 years. However, opposition parties, particularly the Congress and DMK, argue that delimitation should not lead to dominance of any particular region of India in Parliament, and it should ensure fair representation for both northern and southern states.
Undoubtedly, at present, the BJP holds strong influence in many states of North and Western India, but except for Karnataka, it is considered relatively weak in most southern states. Therefore, political parties from the South fear that their representation in Parliament may weaken after the amendment. Hence, the DMK and leftist parties are demanding safeguards against potential discrimination in delimitation. However, the Modi government has sought to dispel these concerns by stating that delimitation will be based on the 2011 Census.
The reason behind this concern is that southern states have performed significantly better in population control, whereas northern states have lagged behind. But now that delimitation will be based on 2011 data, Home Minister Amit Shah has assured that the existing balance between North and South will be maintained in the new seat distribution. Interestingly, when the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed in 2023, it was the opposition that questioned why it could not be implemented immediately and why it was linked to census and delimitation. In a way, through this new amendment, the Modi government has accepted the opposition’s demand by linking it to the 2011 Census, enabling the Delimitation Commission to begin its work soon.
Given this, if opposition parties still hesitate to support the new amendment bill, they may face significant political losses. When the delimitation bill itself removes the requirement of mandatory delimitation after every census, what grounds remain for opposition? As for accommodating 850 members in the Lok Sabha, the new Parliament building can comfortably seat 888 members, and even accommodate up to around 1100, allowing for joint sessions of both Houses when necessary.
