Amendments for facilitating quota for women in Lok Sabha shouldn’t weaken federal balance
World has come a long way from August 26, 1920 – now celebrated as Women’s Equality Day – when US Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the proclamation certifying the 19th Amendment to the American Constitution, officially granting women the right to vote. Ideally speaking, women should have been equal partners in the ballot exercise right from the beginning. However, nothing came easy for them. They had to fight for their rights – right from suffrage to equal pay, education to property ownership, and most importantly justice and freedom from gender-based violence.
When Sansad Bhavan, the new Parliament building was inaugurated in May 2023, the first legislation to be passed in the House was the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, also known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam or Women’s Reservation Bill, 2023. It was passed in September 2023, and reserves 33 per cent of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. This law is a follow-up – although it should have come much earlier – to the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts of 1992, passed in 1993, which had reserved one-third or 33 per cent of seats for women in Panchayati Raj institutions and municipalities.
A three-day special sitting of an extended Budget session of Parliament has been convened from April 16 to April 18 to primarily focus on constitutional amendments to the Women’s Reservation Bill. The government on the opening day introduced three amendment bills to pave the way for the operationalisation of the legislation, including the Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty-First Amendment) Bill, 2026, the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026 and the Delimitation Bill, 2026. The Constitution (Amendment) Bill seeks to further amend the Constitution of India, while the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill proposes to amend the Government of Union Territories Act, 1963, the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Act, 1991 and the Jammu and Kashmir
Reorganisation Act, 2019.
The Delimitation Bill provides for the readjustment of the allocation of seats in the Lok Sabha to the states and UTs; the total number of seats in the legislative Assembly of each state and UT and the division of each state and each UT will be reconfigured into territorial constituencies for elections to the Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies. After its reconstitution, the Lok Sabha will comprise of 850 members, up from its current strength of 543. The Women’s Reservation Act could then be implemented in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, after carrying out the delimitation exercise.
The legislative exercise has however not gone down well with the Opposition, as a row broke out in the House. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech before the MPs assured fair delimitation, further stating that no state will lose out. He also allayed delimitation fear that northern states may gain at the expense of South Indian states. The Opposition alleged that the government wants to ‘bulldoze’ delimitation in the name of women’s reservation, and asserted that if it is really committed to implementing the women’s quota law it should do so immediately on the basis of the current
strength of Lok Sabha.
Although the 33 per cent solution to women’s political inequality is a welcome step, it should not weaken federal balance and reduce representation of ‘certain’ states. The proposed amendments should not be used by the ruling party as a political tool. That would uphold democratic principles and traditions followed in this great country.
