Currently, the Budget Session of Parliament is on a brief recess. This recess is termed “brief” because, on the final day of the ongoing Budget Session, the government decided to reconvene the session for three additional days—April 16, 17, and 18. The “Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam” (Women’s Reservation Act) was passed in 2023 but has not yet been implemented.
The government now intends to put it into effect. Following discussions on this bill over the three-day period from April 16 to 18, the Act will, in practical terms, be implemented.This implies that one-third of the seats will be reserved for women not only in Panchayats or municipal corporations but at every political tier—specifically in the State Legislative Assemblies and in Parliament.
The government favors conducting the next general elections based on this one-third reservation for women. It is for this reason that a special session of Parliament has been convened for April 16. The government also seeks to introduce certain fundamental amendments to this Act. Among the formulas currently under consideration, the first and most straightforward approach is to retain the current number of Lok Sabha seatsnamely 543and reserve one-third of these seats for women on a rotational basis.
However, male MPs are reluctant to accept this proposal, as the rotation system could potentially result in the reservation of their own parliamentary constituenciesseats over which they have established a strong hold.A second approach involves creating an additional one-third of seats specifically for women, over and above the existing 543 seats. However, implementing this method is challenging without a delimitation exercise following a census.