Not against women’s quota but will oppose delimitation bill: Opposition alliance

The Opposition INDIA bloc on Wednesday said that while it supports women’s reservation, it will oppose the Union government’s bill for delimitation of Lok Sabha seats.

The process of fixing the boundaries of electoral constituencies is called delimitation.

After a meeting of INDIA bloc parties in Delhi, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge told reporters that the Opposition together “have one stand”.

“We oppose this [delimitation] bill,” he said. “We are not against women’s reservation. There is no clarity on census…We are against delimitation bill definitely.”

He said the Opposition was against the “politically motivated” manner in which the Union government was introducing the bills.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that the Bharatiya Janata Party was going to lose the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, and claimed that the “Delimitation Commission is a weapon in the BJP’s hands to get a majority”, ANI reported.

He said that the Opposition had demanded that the women’s reservation in Parliament and Assemblies be implemented from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, but was ignored by the government.

“All Opposition parties want women’s reservation to be done based on 543 parliamentary seats,” he said. “We are against the provisions of delimitation. We want women’s reservation to be implemented from the next Lok Sabha elections.”

“This delimitation is very dangerous,” Ramesh added.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Sanjay Raut said “we will take collective action and defeat the bill”, ANI reported.

Communist Party of India leader Annie Raja said that the Opposition supports women’s quota “without any conditionalities” but was not in favour of the government’s “anti-constitutional or federal agenda”, ANI reported.

Leaders of the Congress, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Trinamool Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) were present at the meeting at Kharge’s residence in Delhi.

The meeting came ahead of a three-day special session of Parliament in which the Union government will introduce bills to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 850 from 543.

The 2026 Constitution 131st Amendment Bill, one of three draft legislations being introduced, requires a two-thirds majority of votes in Parliament to pass. The ruling National Democratic Alliance does not have a two-thirds majority in either Houses of Parliament.

Delimitation bill

Although speculation about the amendment to the law had been rife in political circles for the past two weeks, copies of the draft legislation were shared with MPs for the first time on Tuesday.

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 current composition of the Lok Sabha is based on the 1971 Census. According to the 84th Amendment Act of 2001, constituency boundaries were frozen until the first census after 2026.

The census, which began on April 1, is expected to conclude in 2027.

The bill that will be introduced in Parliament proposes to amend Article 82 of the Constitution to remove the entire proviso. This will pave the way for delimitation to take place based on the latest census, which was held in 2011.

In its statement explaining the bill’s objectives, the government said that while freezing the seats on the basis of population in the 1971 census served an important policy purpose, “the country’s demographic profile has since undergone substantial changes” as reflected in the latest census.

It also cited “significant inter-state and intra-state population shifts, rapid urbanisation and migration, and disproportionate growth in certain regions, resulting in wide disparities in the population and the constituencies”.

The amendments will also operationalise the 33% quota for women in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies under the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act “through delimitation exercise to be undertaken on the basis of the population figures of the latest published census”, the government said.

The latest published census was in 2011.

It said that the next census and the delimitation exercise after that “will take considerable time and thus, delay the effective and dedicated participation of women in our democratic polity”.

Opposition parties have been saying that population-based delimitation would give an undue advantage to northern and central states in the Lok Sabha, as the proportion of seats in the North would be higher. They also note that the ruling BJP has greater support in northern states than in the South.

Also read:

• How Modi government aims to use women’s representation to expand Lok Sabha using 2011 census numbers
• ‘Unconstitutional’: Opposition says delimitation must not weaken voice of southern states