“You have proposed delimitation with such haste, the same haste that you showed on demonetisation,” were the words proposed by Mr. Shashi Tharoor while rebuttling against the delimitation bill.
The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill to tweak the women’s quota law was introduced in Lok Sabha on Thursday. Two ordinary bills – the Delimitation Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill to implement the proposed amended women’s quota law in Union territories of Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir were also introduced in the House.
“Unfortunately, we all know what damage that did to the country. Delimitation will turn out to be political demonetisation. Don’t do it,” Tharoor further said.
Tharoor while participating in a debate in the Lok Sabha on the three bills introduced for amendments in the women’s quota law and setting up a delimitation commission, said linking women’s reservation with delimitation is to hold the aspirations of Indian women hostage to “one of the most contentious and complex administrative exercises in the country’s history.”
“The prime minister says he has brought ‘nari shakti’ the gift of justice but he has wrapped it in barbed wire, tethering the implementation of women’s reservation to the expansion of Parliament, to numbers from the 2011 census and an exercise of delimitation,” Tharoor added.
The proposed Delimitation Bill 2026 is expected to trigger a nationwide redrawing of Lok Sabha constituency boundaries based on updated population and voter data. The exercise follows the end of the freeze on seat redistribution that has been in place since the 1970s to encourage population control.
If implemented, it would recalibrate representation across states to reflect current demographic realities potentially increasing the total number of seats and redistributing them across regions.
The government proposes expanding Lok Sabha seats from 543 to 816 using the 2011 census, with no state losing representation.
A 33% women quota is part of the plan and the process remains within the existing legal framework. As part of the same plan, the Centre proposes 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha.
