Women's Reservation, Delimitation and the Future of Representation

WOMEN HAVE BEEN at the forefront of Indian politics since the freedom struggle. Yet, their participation in governance and representation in legislatures and other decision-making institutions remains disproportionately low. Women currently hold only about 14 per cent of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, while their average representation in state legislatures is around 9 per cent. Women remain underrepresented because access to electoral candidature is unequal and largely controlled by political party committees with limited representation of women. This persistent democratic deficit has led women’s groups and prominent women politicians to advocate consistently for reservations for women in legislatures as a means of expanding their political representation. For the past five decades, this demand has remained as the central focus of their political mobilisation and advocacy, yet it has not been implemented.

First introduced in 1996, the Women's Reservation Bill has been repeatedly tabled in Parliament under successive governments but never enacted, reflecting sustained political resistance. Few legislative proposals in the history of the Indian Parliament have generated as much controversy. Much of the opposition stemmed from concerns among male political elites that mandatory reservations would fundamentally alter existing political power structures and jeopardise their political careers, thereby shaking the ground beneath their feet. Nearly three decades later, in September 2023, Parliament passed the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, popularly known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, providing for one-third reservation of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabhas, including within constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Despite unanimous political support, the Act remains unimplemented because its operation was made contingent on the next Census and the subsequent delimitation exercise. Unlike the Women's Reservation Bill passed by the Rajya Sabha in 2010, which contained no such preconditions, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam linked implementation to both processes, thereby ruling out its application in the 2024 general election. Opposition parties and women's organisations criticised these unnecessary conditions, arguing that they would indefinitely delay women’s representation as the government was transforming a gender justice reform into a broader exercise of electoral restructuring and possible gerrymandering. The government dismissed these concerns, assuring Parliament that the Delimitation Commission would be set up after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and that the Census would be completed in time. None of this has materialised.