PARLIAMENT IS SET TO CONVENE for a three-day special session beginning April 16 to consider proposals to expand the strength of the Lok Sabha to 850 members and to remove the requirement that delimitation be based on post-2026 census data, thereby permitting the use of existing figures.
Three Bills have been circulated among the MPs: The Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty-first Amendment) Bill, 2026, The Delimitation Bill, 2026, and The Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026. The latter two are ordinary legislations requiring only a simple majority, whereas the constitutional amendment demands a higher threshold for passage.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has issued a three-line whip to its MPs in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, mandating their presence from April 16 to 18 and making attendance compulsory, with no leave permitted during this period. Prime Minister Modi has written op-eds and made appeals to political parties to support the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam and changes to be adopted in the special session and warning that further delay would amount to an injustice to women. While women’s reservation remains the public-facing centrepiece, critics argue that the substantive changes introduced by the Bill lie in the restructuring of delimitation and the redistribution of seats.
A key feature of the constitutional amendment is the expansion of the Lok Sabha from its current strength to a maximum of 850 members, with 815 seats allocated to states and 35 to Union Territories.
What are the proposed changes?
These three interconnected bills propose a major overhaul of India’s electoral and constitutional framework to expand the House of the People (Lok Sabha) and end decades-long freezes on constituency readjustment.
Expansion of parliamentary representation
A key feature of the constitutional amendment is the expansion of the Lok Sabha from its current strength to a maximum of 850 members, with 815 seats allocated to states and 35 to Union Territories. This increase is justified on the grounds of demographic change, including population growth and rapid urbanisation, as well as the need to accommodate one-third reservation for women without reducing existing constituencies.
In parallel, the Union Territories framework is also restructured with Legislative assemblies in Union Territories being assigned minimum seat thresholds, including 114 seats for Jammu and Kashmir, where 24 seats remain vacant due to territories under Pakistan’s administration.
Reconfiguration of delimitation
The proposed Delimitation Bill, 2026 establishes a new Delimitation Commission comprising a current or former Supreme Court judge, the Chief Election Commissioner, and State Election Commissioners. The Commission is tasked with readjusting seat allocations in both Parliament and State Assemblies based on the latest available census data and redrawing constituency boundaries accordingly.
The Commission is vested with powers equivalent to that of a civil court, including the ability to summon data and witnesses. Importantly, its decisions are final and not subject to judicial review, marking a significant consolidation of authority in determining electoral boundaries.
The proposed change to Article 82 removes the long-standing freeze and hands Parliament the power to decide, by simple majority, which census data serves as the baseline for delimitation.
Shift in basis of population data
The freeze on using the 1971 Census for determining Lok Sabha and State Assembly seat allocations was initiated by the 42nd Amendment in 1976 and extended until 2026 by the 84th Amendment in 2001. This measure was designed to encourage population control and prevent states with effective policies from losing political representation. The proposed change to Article 82 (and related provisions such as Article 170) removes the long-standing freeze and introduces a new formulation where seat allocation will be based on “such census as Parliament may by law determine.” This effectively moves the determination of the relevant census year from the Constitution into the domain of ordinary legislation. As a result, Parliament can, by a simple majority, decide which census data will serve as the baseline for delimitation.
Enabling women’s reservation
The proposal provides for one-third reservation for women based on existing census data, with the justification that waiting for the next census cycle, expected around 2027, would delay implementation.
The key changes are summarised in the table below for ease of comparison.
Why are the Bills being criticised
The strategic bundling of women’s reservation with seat expansion
The proposed near-fifty per cent expansion of Parliament has been framed as a necessary logistical precondition for implementing women’s reservation. The Statement of Objects and Reasons accompanying the constitutional amendment argues that waiting for the next census and the subsequent delimitation exercise would significantly delay women’s effective participation in democratic institutions and therefore proposes to operationalise one-third reservation for women through a delimitation exercise based on the latest available census data.
However, this justification raises an immediate and unresolved question, why wasn’t one-third reservation not introduced within the existing strength of the Lok Sabha itself? The decision to link reservation with a substantial expansion of seats suggests that the two may have been artificially tethered, rather than inherently dependent on each other.
On April 13th, the Chairperson of Congress Parliamentary Party, Sonia Gandhi wrote an editorial in the Hindu titled ‘delimitation, and not the women’s reservation is the issue,’ where she pointed out that the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, was passed unanimously in 2023, but its implementation was made contingent on a future census and delimitation exercise. “In fact, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Shri Mallikarjun Kharge, had forcefully demanded that the reservation provision be implemented from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections itself. For reasons best known to itself, the government did not agree. Now, we are given to understand that Article 334-A will be amended to make women's reservation applicable from 2029 itself. Why did it take the Prime Minister 30 months to make his U-turn? And why can he not wait a few weeks to convene the special session?,” she wrote.
By coupling seat expansion with reservation, the government has arguably placed the Opposition in a position where opposing the Bill risks being framed as opposing women’s representation.
By creating 273 additional seats the framework allows existing legislators, who are overwhelmingly male (approximately 85% of MPs and 91% of MLAs), to retain their constituencies. Instead of redistributing existing seats to accommodate reservation, new seats are created for women. Academic and author Radha Kumar, in an article published in The Wire, raised critical questions: Why should women’s seats be additional seats? Did the male MPs who voted for the bill do so only because they were assured that their seats would not be allocated to women? What made the male MPs so sure that they would be reelected?
Nothing in the 131st Amendment guarantees existing proportions will be maintained, fuelling fears that southern states stand to lose political influence.
Concerns on transparency and pre-legislative process
The manner in which the proposed Bills have been introduced have raised serious concerns about transparency and adherence to established consultative norms. The draft Bills have reportedly been circulated to Members of Parliament only two days before the commencement of the special session scheduled from April 16 to 18, 2026, leaving little to no room for meaningful analysis, consultation, or legislative scrutiny, particularly given the scale and structural implications of the proposed changes.
The Union Government’s Pre-Legislative Consultation Policy, adopted in 2014, requires that draft legislation be placed in the public domain for at least 30 days, with wide publicity, stakeholder engagement, and the publication of a summary of feedback prior to Cabinet approval. The approach in the present case raises broader concerns about the erosion of deliberative legislative processes.
Gandhi in her piece wrote, “Opposition leaders have written to the government not once but thrice requesting that an all-party meeting be convened after the last phase of elections is over in West Bengal on April 29, to discuss what the new proposals of the government are. But that perfectly reasonable request has been turned down. Instead, the Prime Minister has resorted to writing op-eds, making appeals to political parties, and organising sammelans. It is an underhand tactic that reflects the Prime Minister's one-upmanship and his 'my way or the highway" approach to decision-making.”
Lack of judicial review in delimitation
According to The Delimitation Bill, 2026 Section 10, Clause (2), states:
"Upon publication in the Gazette of India, every such order shall have the force of law and shall not be called in question in any court."
The direct consequences of drawing of electoral boundaries on political representation- often determining which communities are consolidated, fragmented, or rendered electorally insignificant – cannot be overstated. In the absence of judicial oversight, there is little recourse if the process results in the dilution of representation for marginalised groups.
Past exercises, including the delimitation process in Jammu and Kashmir (‘J&K’) have been heavily criticized for tilting political representation toward the Jammu region with a significant Hindu population. Thus, complete judicial impunity becomes particularly troubling in such contexts.
Nothing in the text of the 131st Amendment Bill guarantees that present proportions will be maintained which has led to apprehension among southern states, including Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, who argued that this shift in numbers would diminish the influence of southern states in national policy-making.
Opposition members have suggested that the government’s push to use latest published census figures for immediate delimitation is a strategic move to avoid the 2027 Census, which is expected to include caste data.
At the end, it is also important to ask, as we approach a legislative body of over 850 members, at what point does a room become physically and procedurally too large to debate laws? Would scaling up representation, scale down the quality of debates? Managing debates, ensuring meaningful participation and quality speaker time has already been difficult. Could this amendment risk producing more passive or disengaged legislators?