Slogan mongering and inventing fake narratives has been the main forte of Narendra Modi and his government. An extremely severe and obnoxious example is its latest act. The convening of the two day special session of Parliament is a glaring example of that very same trait.
To remove any possible ground of misrepresentation, it is important to point out at the very outset that the Left in this country has been the most consistent advocates for women’s reservation in elections as part of the larger struggle for gender justice in the country. Those who are familiar with the historical sequence of developments on this question would know that the process started with the recommendations of the Geeta Mukherjee Committee which provided the basis for one third women’s reservation in the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies.
Unsurprisingly, this very legitimate demand has met with reluctance and even outright opposition because of the strong influence of patriarchy and our feudal past. Thanks to the extremely powerful equalising influence of the freedom struggle, the voting rights of women were recognised from the inception of the independent republic as opposed to even many countries of the West. However, the dynamics of democratic societies demanded revisit of the premise of gender equality and empowerment, and the demand for reservation of seats for women came as a logical extension to that effort.
The struggle of the democratic forces, particularly the women’s movement, led to the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill by the Rajya Sabha in 2010. However, it could not get passed in the Lok Sabha. Since the assumption of office by BJP-led Narendra Modi government the process had been shelved till 2023. Then a bill was passed by vote of both the houses unanimously, through a Constitution amendment. But, for no rhyme or reason, a strange amendment made the question of women’s reservation a prisoner to the linkage with the processes of census and delimitation. Further, in the last three years the implementation remained stalled due to the non-progress of both.
Since the current session proposes to effect a Constitution amendment, the forging of consensus across the political spectrum is an absolute imperative. What was expected was that the government would carry out extensive consultations with the opposition to accelerate the process of that consensus. Instead, what we are witnessing is an abrupt display of interest by convening this session in the middle of the ongoing Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. The complete lack of action of the government was sought to be glossed over.
Instead of convening all-party meetings to thrash out possible areas of disagreement and divergences, the Prime Minister has penned a post-edit in a national daily where he has stated, “over the decades, there had been repeated efforts to provide women with their rightful place in democratic institutions, by previous governments. Committees were made, bill drafts were introduced, but they never saw the light of the day” and proceeded in a self-congratulatory tone lauding the passage of the 2023 amendment. He has not cared to explain why that amendment of his own choosing linked it to the census and delimitation processes.
Responding to charges that this was intended to delay the process, the government had assured that the census and delimitation will be done with appropriate urgency so that the timeline for adapting reservation would not overshoot the timeline of effectuating one third reservations in the 2029 Lok Sabha election. This betrayed a completely deceitful approach.
Both the census and delimitation processes are complex, contentious and protracted, more so with great diversity and new questions of conflicting aspirations coming up. Therefore, the urgency necessary for completing this process was not only missing but the bills for passage including Constitution amendments were provided to the members of Parliament barely 48 hours before the session. This is obnoxious. Did the Prime Minister presume that the sensitive consensus building could be substituted by his general ‘gospel’ dished out in a post-edit?
Now that the bills are in the public domain, it is amply clear that the exercise is only to introduce the delimitation exercise through the backdoor in the garb of this compelling urgency for women’s reservation. Not only have been the specifics of delimitation proposed, but actual numbers indicated. It is also clear that there is a vile attempt to take the delimitation exercise out of its constitutional independence and make it subject to a simple law of the parliament; that too at a time when the census process has just about begun.
Within hours, the frictions and voices of concern over possible ramifications on regional balance have been sounded. Constitutional amendments and proposed bills of such momentous nature cannot be bulldozed. Against the backdrop of decline of independent constitutional bodies with the actions of the Election Commission of India, with the Special Intensive Revision process, putting the constitutional rights of a large number of citizens to jeopardy, this backdoor attempt to push the delimitation exercise in the absence of census data, which also maps the growth of not just the SC/ST population, but also as assured, the position of OBCs. This attempt is threatening to tear asunder the already strained social fabric.
Under the existing constitutional scheme, Lok Sabha seats are distributed between States on the basis of the 1971 Census and within each State on the basis of the 2001 Census. Article 82 provides that this arrangement will continue “until the relevant figures for the first census taken after the year 2026 have been published”. The proposed amendment removes this provision altogether. It could not get any worse.
The last delimitation exercise took 6 years to complete, from 2002 to 2008. It was implemented in the 2009 elections. Since then, two state level delimitation exercises were held in Assam and Jammu & Kashmir directly under the ECI. Both these were controversial and violated the principles of the Delimitation Act, 2002. Unsurprisingly, the manipulation favoured the BJP with the religious identity of the voters in an area being a prime driver of the delimitation exercises. There are other urgent questions like development models adopted by different parts of the country.
Therefore, as part of the struggle for strengthening and deepening democracy, without denying the rights of SCs and STs and bulldozing democratic norms, the solution lies in going back to the 2010 bill, without linkages to delimitation and census. A simple amendment to the 108th Constitution Amendment, to drop the linkages defined in Clause 34 will suffice.
The opposition is not less than equal to the government’s presumed sense of urgency in ensuring women’s reservation. But, there has to be an emphatic negation of the attempts to bring delimitation through the backdoor.
(April 15, 2026)
