Bill to prepone Women’s reservation defeated in Lok Sabha

New Delhi: Union House Minister Amit Shah speaks within the Lok Sabha throughout the Particular session of Parliament, in New Delhi, Friday, April 17, 2026. (Sansad TV by way of PTI Picture)
| Picture Credit score:
PTI

The Structure (131st Modification) Invoice, 2026, supposed to prepone 33 per cent reservation for girls in Parliament and State Assemblies, was defeated within the Lok Sabha on Friday night. The federal government failed in its last-ditch effort to push the invoice by promising within the Home to introduce an modification associated to a 50 per cent proportional enhance of seats throughout States within the laws. Nonetheless, the 106th modification enacted into legislation in 2023 for girls’s reservation remains to be intact.

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla introduced that 298 members voted in assist of the Invoice, whereas 230 MPs voted in opposition to it. Of the 528 members who voted, the Invoice couldn’t get the required 352 votes to represent the two-thirds majority wanted for a Constitutional modification.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju subsequently requested the Speaker to withdraw the 2 accompanying legislations — the Delimitation Invoice, 2026, and the Union Territories Invoice, 2026 — as they turned infructuous after the pivotal invoice for his or her preponement didn’t go the Home of Representatives. “You will have misplaced a historic alternative to provide 33 per cent reservation to ladies,” Rijiju mentioned whereas accepting that the opposition didn’t assist the invoice.

Lok Sabha seats have been proposed to be elevated to 850 from the prevailing 543 after finishing up delimitation on the idea of the 2011 Census to “operationalise” the ladies’s reservation legislation earlier than the 2029 parliamentary polls.

The Opposition erupted in celebration after the division of votes. Their leaders privately said that that is the second main political embarrassment for the Modi authorities after the rollback of farm legal guidelines.

Chief of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, chatting with reporters after the Home verdict, mentioned the Opposition defeated the laws because it was an assault on the Structure. “We clearly mentioned that this isn’t a ladies’s invoice however an try to vary India’s electoral construction,” he remarked.

Earlier throughout the proceedings, Rahul Gandhi mentioned, “The federal government is telling the southern, northeastern, and smaller States that for the BJP to stay in energy, ‘we’re going to take away illustration from you’.”

“We received’t help you do it. All the Opposition will defeat this try. I wish to guarantee the southern, northeastern, and smaller States that we are going to not permit the federal government to the touch your illustration within the Union of India,” he mentioned.

Replying to the controversy, House Minister Amit Shah dug into historical past to determine that that is the fifth time Congress and the INDIA bloc have been opposing the ladies’s reservation invoice. “Those that opposed the invoice will probably be greeted with sturdy protest from ladies throughout elections,” Shah mentioned, repeating Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assertion throughout the intervention within the debate a day earlier than.

Shah indicated that the federal government was conscious that the invoice would fall. “In the event that they don’t vote, this invoice will probably be defeated,” he mentioned, telling the Opposition MPs, “you may win right here however received’t be capable of face ladies on the bottom.”

To salvage the invoice, Shah proposed that the federal government was prepared to jot down the promise of a 50 per cent enhance of seats for all States into the laws. Shah had made this promise within the Home on Thursday, however the Opposition mentioned it had no which means because it had not been written within the proposed invoice. Talking earlier, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor mentioned Shah’s promise of fifty per cent was “a precarious political assurance and never a legislative certainty”, for the reason that proposed legislation leaves vast discretion to the delimitation fee.

New Delhi: Union House Minister Amit Shah speaks within the Lok Sabha throughout the Particular session of Parliament, in New Delhi, Friday, April 17, 2026.
| Picture Credit score: PTI

However Shah continued, saying, “Give us an hour, we’ll convey an modification to this impact. However do you promise that you’ll then assist go the invoice,” he requested the Opposition.

To this, Congress MP KC Venugopal mentioned the ladies’s reservation invoice must be delinked from the delimitation invoice. Shah didn’t agree, and the try for constructing the last-minute consensus failed.

The Opposition additionally questioned the federal government on a Union Legislation Ministry notification issued late on Thursday night time to implement the 2023 ladies’s reservation legislation with impact from April 16 this 12 months. This was two years and 6 months after a invoice to amend the Act was handed by Parliament on September 21, 2023.

Printed on April 17, 2026