Women's Reservation & the Delimitation Question
India's 2023 promise of one-third of the seats in Parliament and the State Assemblies for women is still waiting on arithmetic. The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, which would have enlarged the Lok Sabha to 850 seats and let the quota start without a fresh census, was defeated in the Lok Sabha on 17 April 2026, 54 votes short of the two-thirds bar. On 8 August 2026 Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the quota can reach the 2029 election only if delimitation is taken up at the earliest, on census figures already published; waiting for the current count, caste enumeration included, could push it past 2034.
- 131st Amendment Bill
- women's reservation
- Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam
- delimitation
- Article 82
- Lok Sabha
- 106th Amendment
- 2011 census
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