Women have been at the forefront of Indian politics since the freedom struggle. Yet, their participation in governance and representation in legislatures and other decision-making institutions remains disproportionately low. Women currently hold only about 14 per cent of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, while their average representation in state legislatures is around 9 per cent. Women remain underrepresented because access to electoral candidature is unequal and largely controlled by political party committees with limited representation of women. This persistent democratic deficit has led women’s groups and prominent women politicians to advocate consistently for reservations for women in legislatures as a means of expanding their political representation. For the past five decades, this demand has remained as the central focus of their political mobilisation and advocacy, yet it has not been implemented.
First introduced in 1996, the Women's Reservation Bill has been repeatedly tabled in Parliament under successive governments but never enacted, reflecting sustained political resistance. Few legislative proposals in the history of the Indian Parliament have generated as much controversy. Much of the opposition stemmed from concerns among male political elites that mandatory reservations would fundamentally alter existing political power structures and jeopardise their political careers, thereby shaking the ground beneath their feet. Nearly three decades later, in September 2023, Parliament passed the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, popularly known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, providing for one-third reservation of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabhas, including within constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
Despite unanimous political support, the Act remains unimplemented because its operation was made contingent on the next Census and the subsequent delimitation exercise. Unlike the Women's Reservation Bill passed by the Rajya Sabha in 2010, which contained no such preconditions, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam linked implementation to both processes, thereby ruling out its application in the 2024 general election. Opposition parties and women's organisations criticised these unnecessary conditions, arguing that they would indefinitely delay women’s representation as the government was transforming a gender justice reform into a broader exercise of electoral restructuring and possible gerrymandering. The government dismissed these concerns, assuring Parliament that the Delimitation Commission would be set up after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and that the Census would be completed in time. None of this has materialised.
Women currently hold only about 14 per cent of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, while their average representation in state legislatures is around 9 per cent.
Three years later, however, the Bharatiya Janata Party (‘BJP’) government’s position appeared to shift. Reports indicated that it was willing to implement women’s reservation without waiting for either the next Census or the delimitation process envisaged under the 2023 Act, instead relying on the 2011 Census to expedite implementation. This is odd particularly when a new Census is underway.
Over the past decade and a half, migration, urbanisation, and the socio-economic disruptions caused by the pandemic have significantly altered population distributions. The next Census will be a landmark in more ways than one, with caste data to be collected for the first time in independent India, potentially reshaping the social basis of political representation. Proceeding in advance of updated Census data, therefore, carries multiple risks: it may produce a misalignment between representation and demographic reality, invite future political contestation once new data emerges, and necessitate further adjustments that could undermine institutional stability.
The 2026 Bills and Why They Failed
The special session of Parliament held from April 16 to April 18, 2026 was convened ostensibly to expedite women’s reservation. It introduced a package of three interconnected Bills: the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026; the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026; and the Delimitation Bill, 2026 (On the women’s reservation bill’s legislative journey, see here). While the latter two require only a simple majority, the first requires a two-thirds majority. Together, the Bills tied the implementation of women’s reservation to a substantial expansion of the Lok Sabha, and this also laid the groundwork for the next delimitation exercise, which would redistribute parliamentary seats among the states, redraw constituency boundaries, and reserve one-third of seats for women, including within constituencies already reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The proposed expansion was supposed to increase the Lok Sabha to 816 seats, but this was not incorporated into the text of the Bills. Although Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured Parliament that no state would lose its proportional representation, such guarantees cannot ordinarily rest on executive assurances. If states are to be protected against a loss of representation, that guarantee must be embedded in the legislation itself rather than left to political commitments.
However, the 131st Constitutional Amendment Bill was defeated, securing 298 votes in favour and 230 against, well short of the two-thirds majority required for its passage. Its defeat was widely anticipated because the government had made women’s reservation contingent on Lok Sabha expansion, which is a far-reaching constitutional exercise. Moreover, these bills were also introduced while elections were underway in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam and Puducherry, and it was done without adequate consultation and adherence to pre-legislative norms, prompting opposition parties to accuse the government of rushing constitutional changes without proper discussion during the election season.
Following its defeat, the government withdrew the linked Delimitation and Union Territories Bills, leaving the timelines for both seat expansion and women’s reservation uncertain. However, if implemented in the future, the proposed expansion would constitute the most significant change to India's representative structure since the introduction of universal adult franchise.
If implemented in the future, the proposed expansion would constitute the most significant change to India's representative structure since the introduction of universal adult franchise.
There was no explanation or rationale given for the huge increase in the size of the Lok Sabha, which would make it unwieldy with little room for meaningful debate. In theory, it would have to meet continuously throughout the year to allow members adequate speaking time, which would further its dysfunctionality. In reality, however, the number of sitting days of the Lok Sabha has steadily declined in the last two of its terms (On Lok Sabha sittings, see here).
Most opposition parties explicitly support women's reservation within the existing strength of the Lok Sabha. But the government was unwilling to take this route. Instead, the National Democratic Alliance (‘NDA’) government went for seat expansion and then reservations. It was assumed that no party would oppose women’s reservation, and concerns over delimitation could be overcome through assurances of a uniform increase in seats. However, these expectations were belied. Nevertheless, the government was quick to blame the opposition parties for this denouement, reproaching them for obstructing women's reservation and especially portraying the Congress and its allies as mahila virodhi. The government for its part had done precious little to implement reservations.
In fact, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam Act, although it was unanimously passed in 2023, was not even notified until the night of April 16, 2026, nearly thirty months after its enactment. Had the government been serious, it could have delinked women's reservation from delimitation and parliamentary expansion. Nothing in the Constitution requires women's reservation to await an increase in the strength of the Lok Sabha.
Women’s reservation was not the central objective of the special parliamentary session in April. Rather, women’s reservation functioned as a cover for advancing delimitation. It was an attempt to prematurely initiate the delimitation exercise by sidestepping the existing constitutional framework, which effectively precludes any such exercise until the availability of data from the 2027 Census. Viewed in this light, the primary focus shifted from enhancing gender representation to restructuring the electoral landscape ahead of the 2029 Lok Sabha elections.
Beyond questions of timing, both the 131st Amendment and the earlier 2023 Act leave key aspects of its implementation unresolved. It remains unclear how seats will be identified for reservation in the expanded Parliament. It mandates a one-third quota but leaves the mechanics, especially the rotation of reserved constituencies, to be decided later. This is no minor detail. Rotation shapes who can contest, where, and with what continuity, directly affecting accountability and constituency development. While the present Act retains the principle of rotation from the earlier Act, it does not specify the criteria for identifying reserved constituencies or the mechanism by which rotation will be carried out. This uncertainty could create prolonged political disputes over constituency allocation and undermine confidence in the fairness of the reservation process.
In practice, the proposed expansion of the Lok Sabha would disproportionately strengthen the political weight of the more populous northern states, where population growth has remained relatively high.
Delimitation and States' Representation
Delimitation has now emerged as the central issue. The Constitution requires Lok Sabha seats to be allocated among the states in broad proportion to their populations, ensuring equality of representation. Parliamentary constituencies were redrawn after the 1951, 1961 and 1971 Censuses, but successive governments thereafter deferred further delimitation despite significant demographic shifts. Even though the northern states experienced much faster population growth than the south in the decades that followed, there was a broad political consensus that the distribution of Lok Sabha seats should remain frozen at the 1971 level until the first Census conducted after 2026. This was not merely a technical measure but a political compromise designed to ensure that states that had successfully implemented population control policies were not penalised in terms of parliamentary representation. It, thus, preserved a measure of federal balance, even at the cost of strict population-based equality. The freeze was based on the assumption that the northern states would eventually catch up on population control and development, which has not occurred, reinforcing the view that demography alone cannot determine the allocation of seats among states.
The current legislative package marks a departure from that long-standing consensus. By proposing a larger Lok Sabha and a fresh reapportionment of seats, it revives the contentious constitutional question of how representation should be allocated among the states. These concerns are compounded by the recent delimitation exercises in Assam and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which have heightened apprehensions about the delimitation process and its potential for communal gerrymandering. In the absence of a transparent and impartial allocation formula, it is impossible to assess whether the exercise will strike an appropriate constitutional balance between equality of representation and federal fairness, or whether it will instead create opportunities for gerrymandering.
Political Consequences
The defeat of the Delimitation Bill marked a significant political setback for the ruling party. Nevertheless, it appears determined to reintroduce bills to reserve seats for women alongside the proposal to expand the Lok Sabha, despite still lacking a two-thirds majority to do so. The expansion of the Lok Sabha by roughly 50 per cent is being presented as a uniform and equitable increase for all states. In practice, however, it would disproportionately strengthen the political weight of the more populous northern states, where population growth has remained relatively high, while diminishing the relative representation of the southern states despite their demographic stabilisation and substantial contribution to the national economy. Delimitation based solely on population privileges numerical strength over developmental performance, allowing demographic weight to outweigh economic contribution and governance outcomes. This would further reinforce the political dominance of the Hindi-speaking belt, an inevitable consequence of increasing the Lok Sabha’s size. This would also strengthen the BJP, and its majoritarian project, which is centred in the Hindi heartland, where it enjoys a powerful electoral base that would translate into greater parliamentary majorities.
The proposals on seat expansion, women’s reservation, and delimitation have arisen from a specific political conjuncture: the ruling party’s failure to secure a parliamentary majority on its own in the 2024 general elections. Yet the purpose of these constitutional changes extends beyond winning the next parliamentary election. They seek to reconfigure the architecture of the political system in ways that could make the BJP’s electoral dominance easier to sustain, bringing it closer to a durable, potentially permanent, majority anchored in the Hindi heartland.
It could fundamentally rebalance political power across regions, social groups, and genders, reshaping who is represented, from where, and in what proportions. Whether they ultimately strengthen or weaken India’s representative democracy will depend on their ability to broaden political inclusion while preserving the constitutional balance between equality, federalism and fairness.
In particular, the central challenge lies in reconciling population-based representation with federal balance, ensuring that more populous states do not acquire overwhelming political dominance while upholding the democratic principle of equal representation. None of this diminishes the case for women’s reservation, which is long overdue and ought to be implemented without any further delay. There is no reason why the imperative of enhancing women’s representation should be tied to a broader package of constitutional changes whose consequences for India’s democracy remain deeply contested.
Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Courtesy: The Leaflet
