Delimitation: Congress says Centre’s conspiracy to weaken democracy defeated, victory for Opposition

Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Saturday accused the Union government of conspiring to weaken democracy and alter the federal structure of the country by attempting to bring in a bill to amend the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act and redraw the boundaries of electoral constituencies.

Speaking to reporters, the Wayanad MP added that the defeat of the 2026 Constitution 131st Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha on Friday was a victory for the Constitution as well as the unity of the Opposition.

Vadra demanded that the Union government implement the women’s quota using the current strength of the Lok Sabha.

“The women’s reservation bill, which was passed unanimously in 2023, should be implemented by the [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi government now, and women should be given their rights,” she said. “The entire Opposition is ready for women’s reservation.”

The Congress MP added that the draft legislations were not about women’s reservation in Parliament and state Assemblies.

“This was related to the delimitation,” she said. “The Modi government had to carry out the delimitation on this basis, in which it would not need to look at the data of the caste census and would have complete freedom to act arbitrarily.”

The Constitution 131st Amendment Bill, one of three draft legislations, required a two-thirds majority of votes in Parliament to pass. The ruling National Democratic Alliance does not have a two-thirds majority of MPs in any House.

The consideration of the bill was rejected by the Lok Sabha with 298 MPs voting in its favour and 230 against. With 528 MPs present in the Lower House, the bill would have required the support of 352 of them.

The Union government then decided to withdraw the two other bills, saying that they were linked to the Constitution 131st Amendment Bill and could not be taken up for consideration separately.

The bills had been introduced by the Union government on Thursday, when a special three-day session of Parliament began. The draft legislations sought to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 815 from 543 and to operationalise the 33% quota for women in the Lower House and Assemblies under the Women’s Reservation Act.

Vadra said on Saturday that the “entire country has seen how the Modi government is defeated when the Opposition unites”.

Referring to speeches made by Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah during the discussion of the bills, the Congress MP said that both of them had claimed that if the Opposition did not agree on the matter, it would never be able to win elections or come to power.

“These statements alone make it clear what the government’s intention was,” Vadra said. “I believe that the conspiracy hatched by the government had the objective of gaining power. For this, the government used women.”

She added: “The Modi government believed that if the bill passes, it would be their victory, and if the bill does not pass, they would label the Opposition as anti-women. BJP wanted to do this to prove itself as the messiah of women.”

Vadra also said that the Union government had lost the trust of the public. “It’s a Black Day for them because they’ve felt a shock for the first time, which they deserved,” she said.

The draft legislations

The Opposition INDIA bloc had earlier said that while it supported women’s reservation, it would oppose the bill for delimitation of Lok Sabha seats.

Opposition parties had said 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 had also noted that the ruling BJP had greater support in northern states than in the South.

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 was introduced in Parliament proposed to amend Article 82 of the Constitution to remove the entire proviso. This would have paved the way for delimitation to take place based on the latest census, which was held in 2011.

The 2023 Women’s Reservation Act was brought into force on Thursday through a notification issued by the Union government. This came while Parliament was debating the amendments related to the same law, including proposals to modify its implementation timeline.