The Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju on Thursday said that the Budget Session of Parliament will be reconvened on April 16 for three days to introduce “important bills”, ANI reported.
Reports indicated that the current session, which was to end on Thursday, has been extended to take up amendments to the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act.
While the Union government did not explain why the session was being extended, Rijiju told Rajya Sabha that “we have a…duty, a commitment, which the House has given, Parliament of India has given to the women of this nation”, The Indian Express reported.
The decision has been criticised by Opposition parties, who claimed that the intention of the Union government to introduce amendments to the law during the Assembly elections was to gain electoral benefits.
While the polling in Assam, Kerala and Puducherry would have concluded on April 9, the election campaign in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal would be underway on April 16.
Tamil Nadu will hold the polls in a single phase on April 23. The voting in West Bengal will take place in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The counting of votes in all states will take place on May 4.
The 2023 Act reserves 33% of the seats in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies for women. However, the reservations will be effective only after a population census is conducted, followed by a delimitation exercise.
Delimitation is the process of fixing the boundaries of electoral constituencies. Article 82 of the Constitution states that after every census is completed, the allocation of Lok Sabha seats to each state must be adjusted based on changes in its population.
The composition of the current Lok Sabha is based on the 1971 census. According to the 84th Amendment Act of 2001, the constituency boundaries were frozen until the first census after 2026.
The population census, which began on Wednesday, is expected to conclude in 2027.
During the reconvened session that will begin on April 16, the Union government is planning to introduce bills to amend the 2023 Act, delinking the 33% quota for women from the 2027 census and opting instead to conduct a delimitation exercise, The Indian Express reported.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said on Wednesday that the government was proposing to increase the number of seats in the Lok Sabha by 50%. The constituencies in each state are also proposed to be increased by 50%, he said.
If delimitation is carried out in this manner, the strength of the Lok Sabha would increase to 816 from 543, with about 270 reserved for women. However, the proportion of the seats a state has out of the total constituencies in the House would remain unchanged.
Ruckus in the Rajya Sabha
In the Rajya Sabha, the extension of the session led to a heated debate between the treasury benches and the Opposition on Thursday.
Rijiju told the Upper House that the Union government will “propose that the House be adjourned, and we will meet very soon, for a specific period, for purposes already known to members”, The Hindu reported.
“We are going to have a very important bill in the next two to three weeks’ time,” The Indian Express quoted the BJP leader as saying.
In response, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh said that the Union government had a “single-minded objective of getting some political advantage of passing the bill, violating the election Model Code of Conduct”. He added that it was “wholly objectionable”.
On Friday, Ramesh said during a press conference that Rijiju had sent a letter to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge on March 16, seeking a discussion with the Opposition party on proposed amendments to the Women’s Reservation Act.
“The same day, Kharge ji replied to the minister, saying that the Centre should convene an all-party meeting,” said the Rajya Sabha MP. “Invite all Opposition parties together, provide a written proposal, and we will all discuss your proposal together.”
On March 24, all Opposition parties wrote to Rijiju again, saying that an all-party meeting should be called after April 29, when the Model Code of Conduct in the poll-bound states is lifted, Ramesh added.
Rijiju had said on Thursday that the decision to introduce the amendments had nothing to do with any state election.
“We have to take it forward because we face certain limitations when looking at the time scale,” the newspaper quoted the minister as saying. “…the government is bound by the timeline, which is its limitation. We have a general election coming in 2029. Today, we are in April 2026…”
He also noted that women’s reservation in Parliament had been passed unanimously.
“…there shouldn’t be politics around women’s reservation, that we also agree, you also do,” The Indian Express quoted the minister as saying. “If we don’t convene…how will we make an important decision? We have given a commitment to the people. It is our duty to fulfil it.”
Kharge had said that the Opposition was not against women’s reservation.
“These people…they take credit whenever they want,” The Indian Express quoted the Congress chief as saying. “If you had to do it, why didn’t you do it in three years? If you had to do it, why didn’t you bring it at the beginning of this session?”
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