On April 13, more than 260 academics, retired civil servants, transparency activists, and former diplomats signed a joint statement accusing the Union government of pushing through three Bills on women’s reservation and delimitation in “complete secrecy”—without releasing draft texts, inviting public comment, or holding consultations with any stakeholders. The statement was released days before Parliament is set to reconvene for a special three-day sitting from April 16 to 18.

The signatories include transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj, economist Jayati Ghosh, Professor Emerita Zoya Hasan, National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) General Secretary Annie Raja, retired IAS officer Aditi Mehta, activist Teesta Setalvad, journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, and several members of the Constitutional Conduct Group, a body of former civil servants. At the time the statement was issued, endorsements were still being added.

According to media reports—no official text has been made public—the Union Cabinet on April 8 cleared three draft Bills. The first would amend the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, commonly known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, which provides for 33 per cent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies. The original law, passed unanimously by Parliament in September 2023, tied the reservation to the completion of the next census and a subsequent delimitation exercise—effectively deferring implementation to 2034 or later. The proposed amendment would delink the reservation from the upcoming census and instead base delimitation on 2011 Census data, aiming to bring women’s reservation into effect from the 2029 general elections.

The second Bill is a Delimitation Bill that would provide for a uniform 50 per cent increase in seats in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies, raising the Lok Sabha’s strength from 543 to 816 and total Assembly seats across States from 4,123 to 6,186. Of the 816 Lok Sabha seats, 273 would be reserved for women. A third Bill would extend the quota to Union Territories.

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Both the BJP and the Congress have issued three-line whips for the special sitting. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing a “Nari Shakti Vandan Sammelan” in New Delhi on April 13, said all parties should come together to pass the amendments and that the opposition itself had demanded implementation before 2029.

The objections: secrecy and process

The joint statement takes aim not at the principle of women’s reservation—the signatories state they “wholeheartedly support” it—but at the manner in which the Bills are being brought. They argue that the government has violated its own Pre-legislative Consultation Policy (PLCP), adopted in 2014, which requires every Ministry to place draft legislation in the public domain for at least 30 days before sending it for Cabinet approval. The policy also requires an explanatory note justifying the proposed law, its financial implications, and its impact on fundamental rights, along with a summary of public feedback.

“The citizens of the country have been kept completely in the dark about the contents of the Bills, their implications and the rationale for bringing these constitutional and legislative amendments,” the statement says. “Information about the proposed laws is reaching people only through media reports based on ‘sources’.”

Anjali Bhardwaj, one of the lead signatories, said in an interview: “There is no transparency in terms of what the government is planning to do. Even the members of Parliament do not have a copy of the draft legislation. Citizens do not have it. So this is a completely non-consultative, secret, and non-democratic way of legislating.”

Bhardwaj added that the government’s decision to link delimitation to the women’s reservation Act appeared to be “more like a smokescreen rather than a real attempt at ensuring that women’s reservation happens, because if the intention is to do women’s reservation, it can be very well done without any delimitation. It can be immediately decided that in the 543, there is 33 per cent reservation”.

Zoya Hasan, Professor Emerita at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, said in a separate interview: “Pre-legislative consultation is crucial, especially for such consequential legislations that can reshape the representative structure of India’s democracy. Rushing important pieces of legislation through without giving MPs or citizens adequate time to examine them undermines democratic principles.” She added that “women’s reservation is imperative and should be implemented at the earliest” but “must not be hustled through or used as a cover for measures like delimitation or for bypassing the Census process which is underway”.

Data compiled by PRS Legislative Research paints a dismal picture of the government’s compliance with its own consultation policy. Since the PLCP was introduced, a significant proportion of Bills introduced in Parliament have come without any prior public consultation. Of those placed in the public domain, a large number did not adhere to the 30-day timeline. The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam itself was passed in a special session in September 2023 without public consultation.

The PLCP, however, is not legally binding. It has no statutory or constitutional basis, and there is no penalty for non-compliance. A Private Member’s Bill seeking to give statutory backing to the consultation process was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in 2022 but has not been taken up.

Delimitation: the real battleground

The opposition’s sharpest concerns centre not on women’s reservation per se but on the delimitation exercise proposed alongside it. The allocation of Lok Sabha seats to States has been frozen since 1976—first by the Forty-second Amendment, then extended by the Eighty-fourth Amendment (2001)—to prevent States that had controlled their populations from losing parliamentary representation to those with higher fertility rates. That freeze was meant to expire only after the first census conducted after 2026.

The proposed legislation would effectively bring delimitation forward, using 2011 Census data rather than waiting for the delayed 2021 Census (now expected in 2027). Southern States fear that a population-based reallocation would shift parliamentary weight to northern, higher-population States. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge noted that the gap between Kerala (20 seats) and Uttar Pradesh (80 seats) could widen further, from 60 seats at present to 90 under the proposed expansion.

Sonia Gandhi, the Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson, described the delimitation proposal as “extremely dangerous” and an “assault on the Constitution” in an article published in The Hindu on April 13. She questioned why the Prime Minister took 30 months to reverse his 2023 position linking women’s reservation to the census and demanded that the government convene an all-party meeting after April 29, when the ongoing Assembly elections conclude. “The heavens will not fall,” she wrote, if the Bills were taken up in the monsoon session of Parliament, which begins in mid-July.

The CPI(ML) Liberation’s general secretary, Dipankar Bhattacharya, issued a separate statement on April 11, accusing the government of seeking to “weaponise women’s reservation to push through a contentious delimitation proposal on the basis of the 2011 census in 2026”. He argued that women’s reservation had nothing to do with census data and that, if the goal were proportional representation, 48 to 50 per cent of seats should be reserved for women.

Timing and elections

The special session has been called in the middle of Assembly elections in four States and one Union Territory: Assam, Kerala, and Puducherry voted on April 9; Tamil Nadu goes to the polls on April 23; and West Bengal votes in two phases on April 23 and April 29. Results for all are due on May 4. Together, these elections cover 824 Assembly seats and more than 17.4 crore voters.

The Congress has accused the government of calling the session to gain political advantage during the election season. Jairam Ramesh, the Congress general secretary in charge of communications, said the session was a “gross violation” of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), which is in force across the poll-bound States. Kharge, in a letter to the Prime Minister on April 11, said the Centre’s “past record” on demonetisation, the Goods and Services Tax, the census, and Finance Commission recommendations “does not inspire any confidence”.

The government, for its part, needs the support of opposition parties to secure the two-thirds majority required for constitutional amendments. The BJP has framed the session as a historic step for women’s empowerment and has launched nationwide outreach through a campaign called “Mahila Samvad”.

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The joint statement makes two demands: that the government release the full text of the draft Bills immediately and ensure wide dissemination in multiple languages; and that it subject the Bills to public consultation in line with the PLCP.

Asked whether opposing the process would delay women’s reservation, Bhardwaj responded: “As of today, we do not know what the government is bringing. The question of delaying something which would be meaningful does not arise because we do not even know what is being brought.” She added that the “best possible laws which incorporate the wisdom of the people” could only emerge from open consultation.

Hasan made a similar argument: “Ensuring transparency and due constitutional process will strengthen, not delay, women’s reservation.”

The statement’s final paragraph sums up the core tension: “It is a profound irony, and a grave disservice to the democratic process, to introduce legislation for women’s empowerment while simultaneously excluding women from the conversation.”

With inputs from Mridula Vijayarangakumar