Women's reservation and Lok Sabha expansion: Balanced development could free us of a zero-sum game

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The Centre’s proposal to fast-track India’s implementation of the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (Women’s Reservation Act) by speeding up nationwide delimitation has opened a Pandora’s box. That Act of 2023 amended the Constitution to reserve 33% of seats in Parliament and state assemblies for women. It was to be done after delimitation, a process by which electoral constituencies would be redrawn based on population.Now the Centre has made two big legislative moves—one to enlarge the Lok Sabha’s numeric strength and another to set up a commission that would carve up India’s electoral map afresh and could use population data from an earlier census than envisaged.

As expected, this has stoked latent but ever-present fears among southern states. A third of all lawmakers being women is not a bone of contention. What has evoked anxiety is the proposed amendment to Article 81 of the Constitution that would raise the cap on Lok Sabha seats to 850.Though the final number would be determined by the delimitation commission (under a separate bill), what is at stake is how an increase from the current 550-seat cap will be apportioned among states.

The bill does not specify an exact seat count or a fixed percentage change. And that is the nub of the controversy. Admittedly, an electoral map frozen since 1976 goes against a basic tenet of representative democracy.

Given the vast population divergences since then, a Member of Parliament from Bihar, for instance, represents many more citizens than one from, say, Kerala. This needs to change. All citizens should be equally represented, regardless of where they reside.