Assemblies offer the clearest path to women’s reservation

On April 17, the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill was defeated in the Lok Sabha. It received 298 of the 352 votes needed, falling short by 54. The Delimitation Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, both dependent on the constitutional amendment, were withdrawn.

The Union government’s response has been to blame the Opposition for denying India’s women their political rights. Union Home Minister Amit Shah said the Opposition would not be “forgiven” by India’s women. This framing is dishonest. The Opposition did not vote against women’s reservation. It voted against a package that bundled women’s reservation with a Lok Sabha seat expansion that had no consensus.

Women’s political representation does not have to remain hostage to this deadlock. It can find a way forward through the state legislatures.

The Congress built women’s reservation at the grassroots. In 1989, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi introduced the Constitution Amendment Bill to provide one-third reservation for women in rural and urban local bodies. It passed the Lok Sabha but could not clear the Rajya Sabha. In 1992, under Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments were enacted, mandating 33% reservation for women in panchayats and municipalities.

More than thirty years later, of roughly 31 lakh elected representatives in local governance across India, nearly 46% are women. Twenty-one states and two Union Territories have raised the reservation to 50%.

Research by Esther Duflo and Raghabendra Chattopadhyay shows that women elected under reservation invest more in public goods directly linked to women’s concerns. A UN University study also found that constituencies electing women showed higher economic activity, outperforming constituencies represented by men by roughly 1.8 percentage points per year.

Reform within reach

Can Assemblies be the immediate next rung on the ladder? The Vidhan Sabha is where the overwhelming majority of governance that directly touches citizens’ lives gets decided and executed. Education, public health, policing, land revenue, water supply, PDS, domestic violence enforcement, and POCSO implementation: all state-list or concurrent-list businesses.

There is also practical arithmetic here. State assembly seats, like Lok Sabha seats, have been frozen at the 1971 Census level. A constituency that had three lakh people in 1971 may have eight or 10 lakh today. Expanding Assemblies to reflect the current population is overdue on its own terms. And when new seats are being created, reserving a third of them for women becomes a matter of design and not displacement.

There is another advantage. Expanding Assembly seats is an intra-state exercise. It does not pit Tamil Nadu against Uttar Pradesh. It does not trigger a north-south contest over relative representation in a federal legislature. Each Assembly grows proportionally to its population growth. No state loses power relative to another. Assembly expansion sits entirely outside the federal balance question that made the 131st Amendment so contentious.

The 2026-2027 Census is underway. For the first time since 1931, it will include caste enumeration. Assembly expansion should be undertaken after this census, for two reasons. First, accurate and current population data is the proper basis for seat allocation. Using the 15-year old 2011 Census, when a fresh census is months from completion, was one of the legitimate objections to the government’s package. Wait for the data. Second, more importantly, the caste census will provide the demographic foundation for OBC representation within the women’s reservation framework.

In panchayats, women’s reservation already operates as a horizontal quota across all categories: general, SC, ST, and OBC. Several states have extended this to OBC women as well. This is the model that should be replicated at the Assembly level. But you cannot do it properly without knowing the OBC population numbers, and the 2011 Census has no caste data.

The Lok Sabha seat expansion is a federal question. The 1976 freeze on seat allocation held for 50 years as a compact of trust among the states of the Indian Union. Building a new consensus on that compact will take time. The women’s reservation should not have to wait for it.

The Narendra Modi government had a choice. It could have pursued women’s reservation on its own track, within the existing 543 Lok Sabha seats and the Assembly seats, as the Opposition, particularly the Congress, has repeatedly demanded. Or it could have pursued Assembly expansion as a first step, where the political barriers are lower and the governance payoff is higher.

The defeat of the 131st Amendment should not be the end of the story. It can be a beginning. Assembly expansion involves no interstate conflict, and the 2027 Census will deliver the data. The 33 per cent women’s reservation with OBC sub-quotas follows a model tested and proven across 31 lakh elected positions over three decades. Every element required for this is either already in place or will be within two years. The Assembly should be the immediate next step. It is achievable, it is urgent,
and it does not require burning down federal trust.

It is within the Union government’s power to initiate. The question is whether it will.

The writer is a member of the Indian National Congress and a former IAS officer.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)