Women’s reservation bid falters as Constitutional Amendment bill falls short in Lok Sabha

New Delhi: The Lok Sabha on Friday witnessed a dramatic defeat of the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, which had sought to expand the number of seats in the house and implement one-third reservation for women in legislatures beginning in 2029.

After two days of heated debate, the Bill secured 298 votes in favour and 230 against, but still failed to cross the two-thirds majority threshold required for constitutional amendments.

The Bill was ambitious in scope. It proposed increasing the Lok Sabha’s strength from 543 to 850 seats, a move tied to the long-delayed delimitation exercise that would redraw electoral boundaries based on population changes.

Alongside this, it aimed to operationalise the 33 per cent quota for women in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies, a reform that had been promised but deferred until after the next delimitation.

The government argued that the expansion and redistribution of seats was necessary to correct the imbalance between voters and representatives, a gap that has widened since the last delimitation froze boundaries based on the 1971 Census.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah both pressed the case for the Bill, warning that women across the country would closely watch the opposition’s stance. Shah accused the Congress of historically blocking delimitation and claimed that the party was once again depriving citizens of fair representation. He insisted that linking women’s reservation to delimitation was the only way to ensure equity in representation.

However, opposition parties countered that the government was using the promise of women’s empowerment as a cover for a political manoeuvre that would benefit northern states with higher population growth at the expense of southern states, which have managed to stabilise their demographics.

The defeat of the Bill also meant that two other related proposals — the Delimitation Bill and the amendment to extend women’s quota to Union Territories — would not be taken up.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju confirmed that the government would not move forward with them after the setback.

For many observers, the rejection underscored the deep political fault lines over how India should balance representation between regions while advancing gender equality in politics. The outcome leaves the future of women’s reservation uncertain. While the constitutional framework for the quota was laid down in 2023, its implementation was tied to delimitation, and with this defeat, the timeline has been pushed further into uncertainty.

The episode highlights the difficulty of building consensus on reforms that touch both the structure of representation and the promise of gender justice. For the Modi government, the loss is a rare reversal in its legislative record, and for the opposition, it is a moment of triumph in resisting what they see as a politically loaded exercise. Yet for women aspiring to enter legislatures, the wait for guaranteed representation has once again been extended, leaving one of the most significant reforms of recent years in limbo.

IANS