The proposed amendments to the Women’s Reservation Bill, 2023 will not only pave the way for an increase in the number of women members in the Lok Sabha, but will also provide a roadmap for bringing about a similar increase in state assemblies, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
As HT reported two weeks ago, the government is working on the bill to provide 33% reservation for women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies from the ongoing census, and roll out the bill from the 2029 general elections. This will include increasing the number of seats in legislative assemblies by 50%.
Read also | A center that works to separate the women’s quota from the census and border demarcation
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that a three-day special session of Parliament from April 16-18 would speed up the implementation of the bill, assuring southern states that their representation would not be reduced.
“The bill will give us a formula for how to choose seats reserved for women at both levels [Parliament and state assemblies]“The percentage of women in state assemblies is around 9%, which is much lower than the 13% percentage of women MPs in Parliament,” said an official familiar with the details.
The new amendment would immediately give an actual date for the increase in the numbers of women in the states as well. Hizb ut-Tahrir had previously reported that the amendments could lead to an increase in the number of seats in the Lok Sabha to 816 seats. Of this number, 273 seats will be reserved for women, and the proportional representation of each state will remain the same. The number 816 is close to the number 814.5 which could be reached by increasing the number of Lok Sabha seats, currently 543, by 50%.
Read also | Congress may support amendments to the Women’s Reservation Bill
After the current round of Assembly elections, a host of states are scheduled to go to the polls in 2027, including Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Gujarat. It is likely that this will be the first election to be scheduled after reservation.
Women constitute only 9.43% of all legislators in state assemblies in India. The lowest representation share, 1.47%, is in Himachal Pradesh and the highest is in Chhattisgarh at 21.11%. Assam and Tamil Nadu assemblies have the lowest share among states with more than 100 legislators, at 4.76 and 5.13, respectively. West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh have the highest rates among these states, at 13.61 and 12.57 respectively.
The law ministry is currently finalizing details of two pieces of legislation — one to separate women’s reservation from the census and another to set up a demarcation commission, the person cited above said. It is not clear what the purpose of the Delimitation Commission will be, given that the government has more or less indicated that the Lok Sabha expansion will only be to reserve seats for women.
The Constitution requires the government to establish a delimitation commission, and Article 82 provides for equitable proportional representation of states and union territories in the Lok Sabha – something that current practice will not achieve.
As seats increase proportionately across states (as indicated by the government), a vote in a more populous state will be less valuable (in terms of weight in electing a representative) than one vote in a less populous state.
It is certainly still unclear whether the government plans to introduce one or two bills in the special session of Parliament. Any draft law would require a two-thirds majority in Parliament. However, a minister told HT that the proposed change would require two separate bills – one on amending the 2023 Act and the second on setting up a demarcation commission.
Proportional representation means, for example, that Uttar Pradesh, which has 80 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha (14.73%), will get 120 seats in the new Lok Sabha; Tamil Nadu, with 39 seats (7.18%), will get 59. “The increase in the number of seats is being done with the same philosophy that we followed when we introduced 10% quota for economically weaker sections in the general category. At that time also, the new quota did not eat into anyone’s quota, we just increased it. This ensured that all these changes were introduced without bringing about any changes,” said the person cited above, speaking on condition of anonymity. They added heartbreak with consensus on all aspects.
Opposition parties welcomed the acceleration of the Women’s Reservation Bill but said any amendments to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha in the middle of the election season would violate the Model Code of Conduct. Tamil Nadu goes to the polls on April 23. West Bengal goes to the polls on April 23-29.
But the government rejected any such election motive, saying there were always some ballot boxes nearby. “The chief minister’s philosophy is yahi sahi saai, sahi saai (right time is now),” the official quoted above said, adding that the earlier time frame — waiting for 2027 census data for demarcation — would have made reservation for women difficult even in the 2034 general elections.
The opposition said the timing of the amendments is intended to give the government a positive talking point, while the conflict in West Asia has raised many challenges. “To divert public attention from the serious economic crisis and the impact on voters in five states, the Prime Minister has decided to amend Article 334-A and remove the requirement of delimitation and census. They have woken up after 30 months and taken another turn. Now they are turning it into an election issue. The people of the five states will give them a resounding reply and reject the BJP decisively,” the BJP leader said.
Leaders from south India, such as Telangana CM Revanth Reddy, have raised concerns about what they fear will be an “unfair demarcation process”.
Certainly, Congress has indicated that it may support amendments to the Women’s Reservation Bill. Several opposition parties have proposed opposing the immediate implementation of the law when it is passed in 2023.
