Seat politics, not women’s rights |
The government’s failure to secure a two-thirds majority for its Constitution amendment bill in the Lok Sabha is being projected, rather conveniently, as a setback to women’s reservation. That framing is misleading. The law granting 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament and state assemblies was enacted in 2023 with broad, near-unanimous support. That issue, as several leaders have rightly said, is settled.
What was placed before Parliament in the recent special session was something quite different. It was an attempt to expand the size of the Lok Sabha and trigger a fresh round of delimitation — the redrawing of electoral constituencies. The linkage with women’s reservation was political packaging. The core proposal was structural: to increase seats and reconstitute constituencies, ostensibly to facilitate implementation.
The timing and method raise legitimate questions. The session was convened in the midst of state assembly elections, with limited prior consultation and compressed scrutiny. Constitutional amendments that alter the architecture of representation demand the highest standards of transparency and consensus. That bar was not met.
At one level, the government’s case appears practical. It argues that reserving one-third of seats for women without increasing the total would displace sitting MPs. Expansion, therefore, is presented as a solution. But the 2023 law itself laid down a clear sequence: a fresh Census, followed by delimitation, and then implementation. The sudden pivot to rely on the 2011 Census, abandoning the earlier commitment to a post-2027 exercise, is a significant departure. It raises doubts about consistency and intent.
Using outdated demographic data to redraw constituencies is not a technical quibble. It goes to the heart of representative........