AA Edit | Delimitation Confusion Sank Govt's New Women Quota Bid

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech to the nation on Saturday after a united Opposition defeated the Constitution amendment bill that sought to increase the number of seats in the Lok Sabha to 850 and redistribute them among the states based on the 2011 census betrayed the BJP-led NDA’s plan to use the entire exercise as a political and electioneering tool. The Prime Minister and his party will seek to portray the Opposition as the villain of the plot but they will have to answer a simple question as to what stops the government from introducing women’s reservation in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies as the law provides now.

The two-day discussion on the bill in the Lok Sabha was also a pointer to the callous and careless way the Union government sought to link delimitation, a contentious but critical issue in the nation’s politics, to women’s reservation in the law-making bodies which enjoyed universal support. Delimitation has to factor in several developments in the nation’s recent history and would call for extensive discussions; women’s reservation is part of our Constitution now. Taken together, the government’s treatment of the topic can drive one to no conclusion other than its total lack of commitment to the cause the bill espouses. The government’s last-minute notification of the law passed in 2023 in fact reflects its realistic expectations about the fate of the bill.

The government has a point in what it stated in the bill which sought to address the “massive population shifts that have occurred over the last five decades during which the number of Lok Sabha seats remained frozen at the 1971 level”. There has been a national consensus on freezing the numbers which was first expressed in 1976 during a Congress regime and was repeated in 2001 by an NDA government. If the government is serious about reworking it, then it must initiate a process to reach a new consensus.

The government, however, appeared confused. While the bill required the Delimitation Commission to base the redistribution on the last census, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues including home minister Amit Shah were seen repeatedly assuring the House, and the country, that no state will see its proportion of seats in the House shrink. This is an irreconcilable contradiction which the Opposition cannot forgo on the word of the home minister. In fact, it might have shocked all those who believe in democracy and the role of Parliament in law-making when Mr Shah offered to bring a redrafted bill on delimitation “in an hour”. Attempts to blame the Opposition for refusing to take the bait cannot but fail, despite the all-out blitzkrieg the ruling coalition could unleash in the coming days.

If the Union government and Mr Modi who heads it are serious about empowering women, they must shed their political scheme at the steps of Parliament and enter it with a sense of duty to the very same women whom they want to “salute” through the bill. It can bring in a bill to operationalise the women’s reservation law retaining the strengths of the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies. It can also bring in a law on delimitation providing for an increase that will retain the state’s share in the Lower House of Parliament. There are viable alternatives available to the government if it chooses not to angle for political dividends from a flop show.

The entire episode saw the Opposition INDIA bloc, which was on the brink of coming apart at the seams, coming together after dropping their individual grudges for a larger political goal. Chances are likely that they have hit upon the idea of standing together against a common enemy instead of fighting among themselves. It could make the nation’s politics interesting to watch.