INDIA Bloc To Oppose Delimitation Linked To Women’s Reservation Bill: Can It Still Clear Parliament Hurdle?

The special three-day sitting of Parliament will be held from April 16-18, during which amendments to the ‘Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam’, will be brought for implementation in 2029

Of all the poll-bound states, it’s only in Kerala that the top leadership has hopes of winning and it wouldn’t want to ruin the chances by pre-empting names.

The India bloc will oppose the delimitation, which has been linked to the women’s reservation bill, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said on Wednesday, the eve of the special three-day session to push for implementation of the legislation.

The special three-day sitting of Parliament will be held from April 16 to 18, during which amendments to the ‘Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam’, commonly known as the Women’s Reservation Act, mandating 33 per cent reservation for women in Lok Sabha and state Assemblies, will be brought for implementation in 2029.

The government on Tuesday circulated bills related to the women’s quota law and delimitation among the MPs. The Congress has alleged that when the intent behind a bill is “mischievous” and its content “devious”, the extent of damage to parliamentary democracy is “enormous”.

The draft bill

According to the draft bill, Lok Sabha seats will be increased to up to 850 from the current 543 to “operationalise” the women’s reservation law in 2029, after a delimitation exercise to be carried out based on the 2011 Census.

Seats would also be increased in state and UT assemblies to accommodate 33 per cent reservation for women.

The government proposes to delink the reservation from the requirement of a fresh Census and subsequent delimitation. A central part of the plan is to increase the total number of Lok Sabha seats from 543 to up to 850. The government plans to introduce a Delimitation Bill, 2026, to redraw constituency boundaries based on 2011 Census data instead of waiting for new population figures.

What Congress said

“We had demanded that it should be implemented starting from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. And quite wrongly, a link has been created between women’s reservation and delimitation. Both provisions—delimitation and women’s reservation—have been included together in a single Constitutional Amendment Bill,” said Congress’s Jairam Ramesh.

“This is what is provided in the provisions related to delimitation, and along with it, the Delimitation Commission has also been mentioned. The way the Delimitation Commission has carried out its work in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir, it has become absolutely clear that the Delimitation Commission is a tool in the hands of the BJP,” he said.

“Clearly, we are against the delimitation bill. We will vote against delimitation,” he said, adding, “The government has suddenly decided to bring this bill amid Tamil Nadu and Bengal polls.”

The Parliamentary hurdle

Under Article 368, the amendment requires a majority of the total membership of the House and a two-thirds majority of members present and voting.

Currently, the BJP-led NDA has approximately 293 members in the Lok Sabha, falling short of the roughly 360 votes needed if all 540 members are present. This makes Opposition support crucial for the bill to clear Parliament during the special session scheduled for April 16–18.

Since the changes affect the representation of states, the bill must also be ratified by at least 50% of State Legislatures after passing Parliament.

Opposition leaders’ meet

Top opposition leaders on Wednesday met at the residence of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to discuss and evolve a joint strategy on the women’s quota law. Several opposition parties are opposed to the linking of the women’s reservation law with a delimitation exercise and an increase in seats in several state Assemblies as per the 2011 Census, and have accused the ruling NDA of indulging in politics over the law. Leaders of the Congress, DMK, Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party, RJD, CPI and CPI-M were present at the meeting at Kharge’s residence.

Besides Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, the other leaders at the meeting included DMK’s T R Baalu, RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, Trinamool’s Sagarika Ghosh, Shiv Sena (UBT) leaders Sanjay Raut and Arvind Sawant, and NCP-SCP’s Spriya Sule, with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav joining virtually.

CPI leader Annie Raja, CPI-M’s Nilotpal Basu, AAP leader Sanjay Singh, Independent MP Kapil Sibal, IUML’s E T Mohammed Bashir and RSP’s N K Premchandran also attended the meeting, other than Congress general secretaries K C Venugopal and Jairam Ramesh.

Kharge had earlier convened a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary strategy group at his residence, where top party leaders discussed women’s reservation and the delimitation exercise.

What are their concerns?

While the INDIA bloc largely supports the 33% quota, they are critical of several proposed changes in the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026 and the Delimitation Bill, 2026. Opposition leaders, particularly from southern states like Tamil Nadu (Chief Minister MK Stalin), argue that a population-based delimitation exercise will unfairly reduce the political representation of states that successfully implemented family planning.

The government proposes increasing the Lok Sabha’s size from 543 to 850 seats. The Opposition flags that this expansion does not appear to be on a pro-rata basis and could disadvantage non-Hindi speaking regions.

Parties such as the BSP (Mayawati) and members of the INDIA bloc continue to demand a separate “quota within a quota” for women from Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC).

Critics argue that by tying reservation to delimitation, the government is delaying its actual rollout until at least the 2029 General Elections.

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