After the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026 fell in the Lok Sabha on Friday — the first defeat for a bill in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in 12 years now — one question cutting through the din of the political battle: Why can’t 33% reservation for women simply be implemented in the current 543-seat Lok Sabha, right now?
The plan, which failed, was to increase Lok Sabha seats by 50% for the time being to 816, and a maximum of 850 at some point; Hence, a third of the reservation is given to women like these Additional seats are being created. The opposition has raged against speeding up the process of increasing seats and demarcating boundaries using outdated census data even as bigger questions remain unanswered.
The legal position of the 2023 law
The 33% reservation for women in the House and state assemblies is already a law. The Nari Shakti Vandhan Adhinyam Bill was unanimously approved by Parliament in September 2023, and It was only notified in the Gazette this week, on 16 April 2026, even as debate over the timetable for its implementation through the Amendment Bill was ongoing. This amendment bill failed to pass the two-thirds majority test in the Lok Sabha and hence never reached the Rajya Sabha. The relevant bills on delimitation and application to Union Territories were never introduced once the parent bill failed.
However, the fact remains that the women’s quota was already legislated three years ago. It is Article 334A of the Constitution of India.
But this law, as written, cannot yet be implemented. It is linked to a specific sequence – first the new population census must be completed, followed by a delimitation exercise to reallocate and redraw electoral districts; Only then does the reservation enter into force.
Under this original timeline, implementation would not be possible before 2034 at the earliest, as the first step, the final census, has only just begun.
The requirement of enumeration, then identification, and then quotas was not something requested by the opposition, head of the Parliamentary Congress Party Sonia Gandhi wrote in a newspaper article on April 13.
“In fact, Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, has strongly demanded implementation of the reservation clause from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections itself. For reasons best known to it, the government has not agreed to this,” she wrote.
The obstacle to implementing reservation in the current 543 seats, on the surface at least, is a condition the government included in the 2023 law. Thirty months later, he wants to scrap that condition, but wants to use old census data to change the composition of his Lok Sabha.
When the 2023 law was passed, Amit Shah told Parliament that the census would be conducted immediately after the 2024 elections, and that the next government would start demarcating boundaries soon after. The 2021 Census was already scheduled by then, having been postponed due to Covid and other mostly unexplained reasons.
The government has now returned in 2026, and has proposed using the 2011 census instead. But the opposition did not agree to this for two reasons: the issue of regional disparity needs to be addressed in the long term first, and the issue of a specific quota for other backward classes as well.
The last census was well and truly only taken earlier this month. A big part of that is also the caste census, which is being conducted for all participants for the first time in nearly 100 years.
Until now, only Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC, ST) are counted in terms of caste, but there have been demands for decades. Also calculate Other Backward Classes (OBC). This is now being done.
The government’s latest argument
During the three-day special session, the government did not present a clear constitutional argument as to why reservation on the current 543 seats could not be implemented.
A mathematical explanation was provided instead. Amit Shah’s argument in Lok Sabha was that if A 33% reservation has been implemented on Tamil Nadu’s current 39 seats, for example, only 13 seats will be reserved for women, leaving 26 seats open to all. If the number of these seats increases to 59, 20 seats will be allocated to women and 39 seats will remain open. The government’s issue is essentially more seats open to everyone, and more seats reserved for women as well.
The government did not argue that applying reservation to 543 seats was constitutionally impossible. The only legal hurdle is the text of the original women’s quota law of 2023, which Parliament can amend.
What the opposition presented, and what remained unaddressed
This is exactly what some opposition members claimed to be offering.
Congress leader KC Venugopal told the Lok Sabha: “You (the government) only put a condition that a census will be held, followed by delimitation, and then reservation will happen. We never said that. We said, only at that time, that we need reservation for women by 2024 elections.”
Opposition Leader Rahul Gandhi also put forward the counter-offer simply, “Bring back this old bill now and we’ll help you get it passed into effect starting right now.
Kalyan Banerjee is from the poll-bound state of West Bengal – where his party is led by the Trinamool Congress Mamata Banerjee is fighting the BJP’s challenge – and going further: “If there is reservation for women, implement it immediately. There is no need to link it to delimitation. You can bring 50% reservation now! But you don’t want to do that.”
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra of the Congress Party asked the government to “be brave” and noted that some leaders, including males, would have to give up their seats if the reservation came. “Indian women can take responsibility,” she said with a smile.
The OBC question is underneath it all
Underneath this entire debate is a constitutional gap that no government has yet addressed. Other backward classes do not have any political reservation in Parliament or state assemblies. There are SC and ST seats in proportion to their population, under Articles 330 and 332 of the Constitution.
The demand for OBC quota – even under universal reservation for women – is not new. It is, in fact, the main reason why women’s reservation remained obscured in Parliament for years. The 81st Constitutional Amendment Bill to reserve 33% reservation for women was first introduced in 1996; And again in 1997 and 1998, but it ended every time. The 2008 bill during the Congress-led UPA period passed the Rajya Sabha test in 2010, but was never voted on in the Lok Sabha. A political consensus could not be reached.
The women’s reservation for 2023 was approved by consensus and provides for reservation within the existing quota for SCs and SCs – meaning SC and SC women get reserved seats within the seats already reserved for their communities.
OBC women do not get anything equivalent, because there is no political reservation in OBC to begin with. The Constitution does not stipulate this.
The demand of SP, RJD, Congress and others for a sub-quota for OBC women under women reservation is constitutionally impossible without prior amendment creating a political reservation for OBC.
Here’s how that could happen:
- Any adjustment to the OBC quota requires data first – specifically, caste census data that establishes its demographic basis. Or even to represent minorities such as those of Muslims.
- The 2026 census, currently underway, will include a caste census for the first time since 1931. Its results are likely to be available within two years.
- Then relevant issues such as political reservation and border demarcation can be discussed.
So far, surveys in Bihar and Telangana show that companies with multiple functions may be more than 50% from India, capturing a job share of about 27%.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said in Parliament, “They (the government) are running away from the (last ongoing) census because the demand for reservations will go up. What if they don’t count OBCs and Muslims in the half of the population which is women? We want Muslim and OBC women to get reservations – that is our demand.”
By going ahead with delimitation based on the 2011 Census — before caste data from the 2026 Census is available — the government will lock constituency boundaries for “10-15 years” without resolving the OBC representation gap, Rahul Gandhi said.
Where have things reached the women’s quota now?
Currently, the three bills to use the 2011 Census — to redraw the House of Representatives and thus the women’s quota accordingly — are down.
The 2023 Women’s Quota Law is still on the books, but is not enforceable without demarcation.
The question of border demarcation itself remained unresolved for 50 years. It was last implemented in the 1970s, then postponed for 25 years twice. Besides the IOC’s quota request, a more fundamental question remains unresolved.
The southern states fear losing their relative share in the long term If only population is used as a basis for demarcation. MK Stalin of the DMK, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, for example was the first to burn copies of the latest bills. The fear is that states that have done well on the national population control and family planning policy will end up being penalized for it, while states in the Indian belt, where poverty and population remain high, will end up having a greater role in parliament.
Amit Shah said the fixed 50% increase would not change the state’s share, and at the last minute promised to write it into law.
By then, it seemed too late.
The opposition has demanded that the method of demarcation of boundaries, population as a basis, and OBC quotas, all be discussed in detail before any bills are moved.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said in the Lok Sabha on Friday that the demarcation was hastily proposed, “the same haste you showed on demonetisation”.
“Unfortunately, we all know the damage it (demonetisation) has done to the country. Demarcation will turn into political demonization,” the Kerala MP said, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government’s demonetisation of high-value notes in November 2016.
