TWO WEEKS AGO, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to the national airwaves to deliver a stinging indictment: he characterised the Opposition’s rejection of the Delimitation Bill as a direct assault on the dignity of Indian women, even terming it “a foeticide of the idea of women’s representation before the whole world, via their opposition to the move”. The government’s narrative appeared to have been a gamble on the fragility of public memory, hinged on the hope that Indian citizens may have forgotten that the women’s reservation in the legislature had was already been codified into law back in 2023 through the passing of the 106th Constitutional Amendment Act (Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam),.
The political theater of April 2026 suggests that women’s empowerment is being weaponized as a moral smokescreen to hide a more radical agenda of electoral re-engineering. This re-engineering could fundamentally reshape the federal balance in the country, penalising some of the highest performing states. But beyond the current debacle, how must we view the issue of delimitation? Is an enlarged Parliament necessarily what India needs at the moment? Are there critical learnings for India from a global perspective? And if at all delimitation is to be undertaken, what are the best options that lie ahead?
