India fails to pass bill to boost women’s representation after delimitation row | India
India’s government has failed to pass a bill to increase women’s representation in parliament after it was accused of using the scheme to redraw the country’s electoral map.
A constitutional amendment proposed by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government has failed to pass parliament for the first time in its 12 years in power.
The failure came after a fierce debate; The government has been accused of an “attack on democracy” after linking a bill reserving a third of parliamentary seats to women to a broader, controversial “restriction” practice. The process will realign parliamentary constituencies according to population limits according to the 2011 census and increase the number of MPs in the lower house from 543 to approximately 850.
As a constitutional measure, the bill required a two-thirds majority, making it more difficult for the BJP and its National Democratic Alliance, which lack an absolute majority, to pass the law. At the last count, 298 MPs voted in favor and 230 MPs voted against.
India’s often fragmented opposition parties have rarely shown unity in the fight against the bill. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, a member of the Indian National Congress, called it a “blatant attack” on democracy, while another senior figure, Gaurav Gogoi, accused the Modi government of trying to “bulldoze” the restriction through the back door.
Delimitation is one of the most divisive federal issues in India. This is particularly controversial in more prosperous southern states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, which have seen population growth decline in recent years and fear retribution for their political representation.
Meanwhile, the poorer and more populous northern states, considered the political heartland of the BJP, will gain the most seats if they re-engage.
India’s electoral map was last redrawn in 1971 and the southern states want these boundaries to be frozen for another 25 years.
MPs of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which governs Tamil Nadu, came to the parliament on Friday dressed in black to protest. The other day, Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin described the bill as a “punishment” to the southern states and burned a copy of it in front of parliament.
Opposition MPs questioned why women’s representation was linked to a much larger political exercise. Rahul Gandhi, a senior figure in the opposition Indian National Congress party, said: “The first fact is that this is not a women’s bill. This has nothing to do with women empowerment. This is an attempt to change the electoral map of India.”
The bill, which reserved one-third of the seats for women, was unanimously accepted in the parliament in 2023, but its implementation was postponed until at least 2029 due to some election processes. The BJP said the new bill will speed up the implementation of women’s parliamentary quotas.
Modi said: “Let us all not miss this important opportunity to give reservation to women. I have come to appeal to you; do not look at this from a political perspective, this is in national interest.”
In parliament, home minister Amit Shah said the cap was necessary to reflect population growth in a country of more than 1.4 billion people. “Every voter should value their rights equally, and we believe they will issue this expansion,” he said Friday.
In response, opposition lawmaker Shashi Tharoor said that restricting women’s reservations “effectively holds the aspirations of Indian women hostage to one of the most contentious political practices in our history.”
“We risk creating the tyranny of the demographic majority, where a handful of large, poor states can theoretically determine the fate of the entire country,” he added.
