The Indian government is trying to speed up the implementation of a 2023 law that reserves 33 percent of seats in Parliament and state assemblies for women, but the move has been linked to a wider redrawing of parliamentary constituencies, raising political tensions.
“We are ready to take historic steps to empower women,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said ahead of a special meeting of Parliament on Thursday. When his government presented three bills for debate in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament.
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While two of the three bills relate to increasing the number of women in Parliament and state legislatures, a third bill deals with “delimitation”, as the process of redrawing parliamentary boundaries based on population is called in India. The bill aims to increase the total size of Parliament from 543 Lok Sabha seats to 850.
The bills are being taken up during a three-day special session and will require a two-thirds majority in both houses for passage. Modi’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has 293 seats in the lower house of parliament while 360 ​​votes would be required for a two-thirds majority.
At present 14 percent of Lok Sabha members are women. “We are all united to give due place to women in India,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said on Thursday.
Many Asian countries, including India’s neighbors like Nepal and Bangladesh, have similar quotas for women in national legislatures. India already mandates that one-third of seats in local governing bodies be set aside for women.
Opposition accused of ‘gerrymandering’
While there appears to be broad bipartisan support for including more women in Parliament, opposition parties have raised concerns over changing voting boundaries, warning that it could tilt the political balance in favor of Modi’s Hindu majority Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The BJP draws most of its support from the densely populated north, and critics say it would benefit most from an expansion of seats in Parliament. Leaders from southern states, where birth rates have declined more rapidly, said the population-based delimitation exercise could increase seats in the North and hurt southern regions that have slowed population growth and built strong economies.
The Indian Constitution states that parliamentary seats will be allocated on the basis of population and will be revised after each census. However, boundaries have not been redrawn since the 1971 census as successive governments delayed the process.
The government is now proposing that the delimitation of new seats be based on the last census conducted in 2011 and implemented for the next general election in 2029.
But opposition parties want the government to wait for the results of the ongoing census, which was launched this month, a daunting logistical challenge that will take a year to complete – and even longer to process the data.
Main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said his Indian National Congress party supports increasing the number of women in Parliament, but the government’s approach is aimed at consolidating power.
“The proposal the government is now bringing has nothing to do with women’s reservation,” Gandhi said in a statement on social media. “It is merely an attempt to capture power through delimitation and gerrymandering.”
According to a report by India’s Scroll.in website, Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi alleged that the government’s intention was not to implement women’s reservation but to implement delimitation “through the back door”.
Samajwadi Party MP Akhilesh Yadav asked whether Muslims would be given any kind of reservation within the quota for women, The Indian Express reported.
The BJP hit back at the criticism, saying it would implement a uniform 50 per cent increase in seats in all states and maintain proportional representation across the country. However, this is not clearly mentioned in the draft Delimitation Bill.
Speaking in Parliament, Modi said the law was “not discriminatory” and “will not cause injustice to anyone”.
But the opposition was not convinced. Some members from southern states came to Parliament wearing black clothes in protest.
MK Stalin, chief minister of the southern state of Tamil Nadu and BJP rival, burnt a copy of the bill and hoisted a black flag in protest and urged people across the state to do the same.
“Let the fire of resistance spread across Tamil Nadu,” Stalin said, accusing the BJP of trying to marginalize the state by redrawing boundaries. “The arrogance of the fascist BJP should be brought down.”
