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Is Modi Govt Fast-Tracking Women’s Reservation Bill to Push Delimitation, Which It Is Finding Tough to Sell?

The Wire Analysis

Questions arise about the most recent whim of the Narendra Modi government, of advancing the date for the implementation of the 128th Constitutional Amendment passed in 2023, ensuring that one-third of the seats in parliament and state legislatures will be reserved for women, after the first census after 2026 and delimitation that is to follow.

Why now?

Why has the Modi government found it necessary to suddenly bring in women’s reservation now? Does it perhaps wish to change the lay of the land before the Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab elections next year? Jairam Ramesh, Congress leader, Rajya Sabha MP and chairman of the party’s communications department, writes that the reservation of one-third seats in constituencies for general category, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities, was to “become operational after the delimitation and census exercises would get completed.”

Ramesh adds, “When the Nari Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 was being debated, the Indian National Congress had demanded its immediate implementation from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections itself. The Modi Govt said this was not possible since both delimitation and the census had to necessarily be completed first. Now the U-turn Ustad has, after 30 months, suddenly changed his mind and wants to implement the reservations WITHOUT completing the delimitation and census operations.”

U-turns on their own policies, brought in by the same government and less than three years ago on a constitutional question, with grave repercussions on the polity have to be thought through.

It is a question as to why the government cannot wait for delimitation to take place after the census and must hustle now. What has changed to suddenly?

2. What is the fear associated with the 2026 census? Is it because it is a caste census?

The Tamil Nadu chief minister, M.K. Stalin, has welcomed women’s reservation, but urged caution on how delimitation is being sought now to be done in a hurry to perhaps make the political terrain easy for the BJP in state elections next year it has a lot at stake in. Stalin has said, “This step is not in line with The Constitution (128th Amendment) Bill, 2023 passed by the Union BJP Government and its earlier position to take up this historic initiative only after delimitation is carried out based on the Census conducted after 2026. This is most probably aimed at securing electoral gains in the forthcoming Assembly elections in four major States.”

He, along with his sister and DMK leader in parliament, K. Kanimozhi, has backed women’s reservation, “as the President of the DMK and the proud inheritor of the Dravidian legacy that has spearheaded women’s empowerment for more than a century, I fully support this initiative of #WomensReservation without any preconditions, while at the same time stressing our right to fair delimitation. It is our consistent stand that the current proportional representation of States should not be disturbed under any circumstances. To achieve this, the delimitation and distribution of constituencies among States must include a constitutional provision ensuring the same for the next 30 years.”

The Modi government has not made any formal disclosures about how 50% of seats are to be increased. Newspaper reports say that Lok Sabha seats would increase to 816 from 543. The Economic Times has a number chart on how seats would change within the states, but the weight of the states relative to each other would be the same. Their would be no increase on Lok Sabha MPs from one-MP states of Sikkim, Nagaland and Mizoram, but their state assemblies would see an increase in seats.

Delimitation has been a thorny subject which the BJP has been absolutely quiet on. A crude population division would simply cripple political power of peninsular India’s states which serve as economic (and employment generation) engines of India and have succeeded in stabilising populations. This would mean rewarding states that have not been able to control their Total Fertility Rates, like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. As politics of states which would gain are seen to be historically at odds with what is going on in states which have managed to pull themselves up, this would not be a simple statistical call.

The last delimitation in India was before the 2009 general elections, but then, too, the number of seats did not change. It was in 1972 that the last distribution of Lok Sabha and state assembly seats was done. The decision to increase seats was postponed to the 2001 census, and then to 2026 by the 84th amendment in 2001. The logic being that by then, population in the northern states would have stabilised.

The 2026 census is on and is a landmark one as it will reveal caste details for the first time in independent India. Why then suddenly would the government reverse a constitutional amendment passed only in 2023 and rely on 2011, a census that is 15 years old? Is there a worry that data revealed in the caste census will illuminate caste backwardness amongst OBC groups that would merit a re-apportioning of women’s seats accordingly too?

3. The sanctity of the Model Code of Conduct

Despite the Model Code of Conduct being in place, INDIA parties are sceptical of this announcement bang in the middle of electioneering. The Model Code of Conduct, with the withering reputation of the Election Commission, has been termed by the Opposition as the “Modi Code of Conduct”. Why move for such a big shift just now, in the next fortnight, and not after the election process is over on April 29?

There have been attempts to brief some parties, as Deccan Herald reports. The Trinamool Congress, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and Communist Party of India (Marxist) also did not meet Shah, though parties like the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar), Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), YSR Congress Party and Biju Janata Dal did. A senior TMC leader called the government move a “purely political stunt”, as per the newspaper.

Opposition members of the INDIA alliance have signed a letter written by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to Union minister for parliamentary affairs Kiren Rijiju seeking an all-party meeting to be convened to discuss the implementation where opposition parties have reiterated their demand for the all-party meeting to be held after the upcoming assembly elections, to discuss proposed amendments to the Act, and said that “to make the meeting more productive, it is necessary for the Government to circulate a note detailing what exactly is being proposed.” The letter by Kharge, who is also the leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha, has been signed by members of the opposition, including from the Samajwadi Party, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar), Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, and Jammu and Kashmir National Conference. TMC is the only party that is not a signatory to this letter.

The letter states that Kharge had earlier written to Rijiju on March 16, requesting for an all-party meeting chaired by the prime minister at the earliest to discuss as desired by the government the “modalities and roadmap for the implementation of the Nari Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023.”

“It appears that the Government is now planning a further Amendment to the Constitution Amendment passed in September 2023,” the letter says.

“To make the meeting more productive, it is necessary for the government to circulate a note detailing what exactly is being proposed. The all-party meeting should be held after the current round of assembly elections is completed on April 29.”

4. What happened to pre-legislative consultation?

The three agricultural bills passed in the middle of COVID-19 in 2020, by a voice vote, with no committees scrutinising the merits of the bills as well as no pre-legislative consultation with farmer groups led to a massive agitation by farmers and eventual retraction of the three farmer laws, personally announced by Modi.

But no lessons on even information about important policy decisions appear to have been learnt, far less about consultation with several groups and sets of people affected by this decision. In this case, the entire country.

So what has happened to pre legislative consultation that the government that preceded the Modi government paid heed to? In a reply to a parliamentary question on February 10, 2022, the then-Minister for Law and Justice, Kirin Rijiju admitted that “the Pre-Legislative Consultation Policy was formulated by the Committee of Secretaries under the Chairmanship of Cabinet Secretary on 10th January, 2014 and every Ministry/Department is required to adhere to the decision taken there under and give effect to the said policy.” But, he said, the “Ministry of Law and Justice does not maintain any record relating to compliance by the Ministries/Departments with the Pre-Legislative Consultation Policy.”

He further admitted that while “Paragraph 9.2 (a) of Chapter 9 of the Manual of Parliamentary Procedure in the Government of India provides that the Ministry/Department concerned will formulate the legislative proposals in consultation with all the interested persons and authorities concerned, including a discussion on the necessity for the proposed legislation and all matters of substance to be embodied therein. Every Ministry/Department has to comply with this requirement.”

But, citing the exception to that, made clear that it had been cast by the wayside. “However, paragraph 11 of the Pre-Legislative Consultation Policy gives sufficient leeway for the Ministry/Department to eschew the Pre-Legislative Consultation Policy on the ground that it is not feasible or desirable so to do.”

[Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu.]

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The Many Angles to Implementing Women’s Reservation in Politics

Radha Kumar

It seems that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is pushing for delimitation without the 2027 Census results, on the grounds that it will enable implementation of the 2023 Nari Vandan Adhiniyam Act by or before the 2029 general election (the 2027 Census results will only be released in 2028-2030, delaying implementation to 2034). Union home minister Amit Shah has engaged in several rounds of consultation with allies and opposition parties to seek support for legislation to this end. But is his initiative focused on implementing women’s reservation, as is claimed? Or is women’s reservation being used to push legislature expansion, especially of the Lok Sabha?

On March 24, news outlets, both digital and print, reported that Shah proposes a 50% increase in legislative seats so that one-third of total seats can be reserved for women. This would allow sitting MPs (85% male) and MLAs (91% male) to retain their seats for reelection. The Lok Sabha will acquire 273 additional seats, bringing total seats to 816. In order to implement these proposals, the Modi administration will bring two bills – one for delimitation using the 2011 Census results, and the other a Constitutional amendment to freeze states’ seat shares at the current level.

By the evening of March 24, the same news outlets clarified that each of the four proposals was stand-alone – that is, the 50% legislature expansion was not linked to the 33% women’s reservation. But the math suggests the linkage – a 50% expansion is required to provide one-third for women without reallocating male MPs’ seats. So why the clarification?

Perhaps it was meant to obscure the targeted approach of the Modi administration. Women’s reservation is a good peg to hang the goal of legislature expansion on, since opposition parties’ support women’s rights, as do many of the vocal public; indeed, the Congress has piloted bills for women’s reservation since the 1990s (then opposed by the BJP as well as other parties). By contrast, legislature expansion is contested – most MPs want it, to alleviate the heavy burden that population increase has placed on them. But many in the public are ambiguous, given widespread disillusionment with elected representatives.

Moreover, most democracy analysts agree that parliament will barely function if the Lok Sabha is substantially expanded, an eventuality that might suit the BJP given its Speaker’s disinclination to allow debate. Tying women’s reservation to legislature expansion, therefore, cloaks its dual goal, of an 816-strong Lok Sabha – if anyone now debates the numbers, he/she will be accused of being anti-women – and protection of sitting male MPs.

Sweetening the deal, Shah’s offer to freeze states’ seat shares at the current level is clearly intended to win support of the southern states that, led by Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin, strongly opposed Lok Sabha expansion since it would, on population count, reduce the southern states’ seat share to below a fifth of total seats (at present they stand at 23.9%). The Stalin administration has just released a massive report arguing that Lok Sabha expansion be limited to 7 seats; the issue of numbers was poised to dominate debate on expansion.

The freeze on states’ seat shares allays the southern states’ fears and extracts the quid pro quo of support for greater Lok Sabha expansion as well as delimitation using the 2011 Census, as Stalin implied in his tweet of March 24.

Why is the 2011 Census so important? The administration’s argument appears to be that it is the default option given the delayed 2027 Census, for which the BJP alone is at fault. But is that really the case? Women’s reservation is not dependent on legislature expansion or Census results; a delimitation commission only has to allocate one-third of total seats to women. It can be implemented in the current strength of Lok and Vidhan Sabhas.

Could it be that the Modi administration wishes to avoid the 2027 Census because it will include caste, and the ruling BJP is concerned how caste figures might impact public demands for representation? While the BJP’s electoral and activist base includes substantial numbers of the Other Backward Classes (OBC), its use of these castes and their prominence has caused considerable dissatisfaction amongst the upper castes; the Scheduled Castes (SC) appear to be turning away too, as are several Denotified Tribes that have been omitted from the 2027 Census’ list. Shah’s proposal, in fact, allows the BJP to omit the caste results in the 2027 Census, as happened with the 2011 Census.

What methodology will be used to allocate women’s seats? Shah’s strategy appears to be to get the 50% expansion passed by parliament, restricting a delimitation commission to the task of demarcation alone. Here too there is a danger – if a new delimitation commission follows the examples of the Jammu and Kashmir and Assam delimitations, it can redraw constituencies that reduce Muslim, and in some cases Scheduled Caste and Tribe, voters to an insignificant minority, and even to do away with Opposition strongholds altogether. And now they might have 816 constituencies to gerrymander.

Reportedly, Shah wished to rush the two bills enshrining his proposals through the current parliamentary session ending on April 4. Under opposition pressure, he agreed to postpone, perhaps to the monsoon session. Opposition parties have suggested an all-party meeting after the upcoming state elections, so that they can examine Shah’s proposals in depth.

Among the issues to consider, the uppermost are: (a) delinking women’s reservation from legislature expansion; (b) separately debating what number of additional seats are required to ease the burden on legislators; (c) ensuring that a new delimitation commission is headed by an impartial jurist who is well-versed on norms and means of democratic representation, and that it includes legislators of all parties in equal number, including at least 33 percent women; and (d) making it mandatory for the commission to put its draft recommendations in the public domain for feedback.

They might also raise a fifth issue: whether a proportion of reserved women’s seats should be allocated in constituencies from which no woman has won in the past 4-6 elections. Such a move would remove the taboo on women public figures in these constituencies and send a message to other constituencies regarded as male fiefdoms. The linkage proposed by Shah to protect sitting male legislators is not only unnecessary, but also shameful. And it relies on unproven assumptions.

Why should women’s seats be additional seats? Did the male MPs who voted for the bill do so only because they were assured that their seats would not be allocated to women? What made the male MPs so sure that they would be reelected? Parliamentary data does not substantiate that assumption.

Finally, it is time for Opposition parties to begin to identify and nurture women candidates. The BJP already has an advantage, since it embarked on the task some years ago. Unfortunately, none of the BJP’s women legislators have piloted or even supported women’s rights; they appear to constitute a shrill echo chamber for the Prime Minister and his administration. There is thus a large gap to fill.

Amongst the Opposition parties, the Trinamool Congress stands out for having the largest proportion of women legislators, who do their homework and are also combative, but almost every Opposition party includes articulate and committed women legislators, as the splendid debate on Operation Sindoor showed. I hope they will take a joint lead in formulating Opposition policy to ensure that women’s reservation is not instrumentalised to serve chauvinist ruling party interests. That is the least that Indian women deserve.

[Radha Kumar is a writer and policy analyst. She was a government-appointed interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir in 2010-11. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu.]