By Shikha Mukerjee
Some habits die hard. Politics, especially big ticket fights, continues to be conducted between men. On the issue of delimitation of electoral constituencies for elections to the Lok Sabha and state Vidhana Sabha/Soudha (aka Saasana Sabha), the current bone of contention is between the central government and opposition parties, especially those in power in the Southern states. Women and their right to political representation are noticeably missing from the frontlines of the ongoing verbal war.
This time the debate on delimitation has so far focused on how a desired increase of seats in the national Parliament and state Legislative Assemblies will be distributed among the various states. The fact is that the exercise is also about identifying and notifying one third of all the post-delimitation legislative seats for women. As stakeholders in the delimitation exercise, women ought to be leading the debate, along with their male colleagues, as the political confrontation over delimitation of constituencies intensifies.
As and when delimitation takes place, what must also happen is identification of the one third of seats in the Lok Sabha and in the state Assemblies that must be reserved for women. It is therefore shocking that as the confrontation has snowballed between the opposition-ruled states – primarily south of the Vindhyas, including Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Telangana – and the central government, neither the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) nor the Communist parties nor the Congress (INC), who are in the forefront of the debate, appear to have noted that the delimitation exercise is crucial for a very different reason as well.
The turbulence ought not to be only about which states will gain seats and which states will proportionately lose seats even if the latter are primarily the southern states, all of them ruled by regional parties or the Congress or a coalition of Left parties led by the Communist Party of India [Marxist] (CPI-M), and the former are states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is also in power at the Centre. Delimitation is not men’s business only.
Regardless of the gains or losses of parliamentary seats and of expansions in the state legislatures, the post-2026 delimitation exercise will fundamentally change the way in which Indians are represented, as citizens and voters. The Women’s Reservation Act, 2023 (aka the Constitution [106th Amendment] Act, 2023 and Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023), passed by both Houses of Parliament in September 2023, makes it clear that one third of the seats to be contested in elections at the national as well as state levels must be reserved for women. In fact, the long-awaited new law will come into effect only once the long-pending processes of the decennial census and the subsequent delimitation of seats are completed. The next Delimitation Commission is supposed to be constituted after 2026.
The absence of women’s voices in the delimitation controversy is a matter of concern. States such as Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Telangana are worried that their representation in Parliament will decline as a proportion of the total number of seats in Parliament, while the representation of states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat is expected to increase. Women should also be actively engaged in the debate over delimitation to ensure that they finally get due representation and share in power at the national as well as state levels.
The current silence of women on the important matter of delimitation is surprising and unfortunate, especially considering the fact that delimitation this time is a historic moment when one third of all legislative seats are to be reserved for women in view of the long overdue passage of the Women’s Reservation Act in 2023.
Women’s silence so far appears to reflect what has been referred to as “adaptive preferences,” a survival choice that is rooted in distorted perceptions, based on deformed values, that tend to accept unjust ideas like family first, self-sacrifice and customs over rights, which do not recognise women’s rights as human beings and as citizens. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum summarised such choices thus: “Women’s current preferences often show distortions that are the result of unjust background conditions,” because they have been socialised to accept their status as “passive dependents,” in order to perpetuate their subordinate role. Such adaptive behaviour can be seen in the acceptance by many women elected to panchayat bodies that they should be represented by their unelected husbands in panchayat meetings and activities. Such men are now routinely referred to as “panchayat patis” even in official communications. There have even been instances when these men have been sworn in as proxies for their wives.
The current row over delimitation was triggered by the Tamil Nadu government’s decision to engage in a fight over the New Education Policy (NEP), the three-language formula and, of course, the sharing of funds between the Centre and the states. Chief Minister Stalin sees the language policy as a stealth attack to impose Hindi on states that have had a long history of opposing language nationalism. Stalin’s suspicions about the BJP’s intention to establish its dominance over the political discourse in Tamil Nadu may well be valid. However, it is important for him and other leaders involved in the debate over delimitation to remember that the issue of women’s reservation is as equally important an issue to highlight in the delimitation debate. It is also the duty of all those who fought long and hard for women’s reservation to become a reality to ensure that this critical issue is not forgotten in the ongoing discussion on delimitation.
All delimitations are contentious. The demand for a fresh delimitation based on the jump in India’s population over the past 50 years has been raised by many political parties over the years. And all political parties know that there has to be a population head count – that is, a Census – before the delimitation exercise kicks off.
This was the logic that was applied when the Women’s Reservation Act was finally passed in 2023; the reservation would become applicable after 2026 and after the Census conducted immediately after that year – that is, the 2031 Census. The process of delimitation is known. Each delimitation exercise is kicked off after Parliament enacts a law constituting the Delimitation Commission and framing the terms of reference. What is shocking is the amnesia that seems to have overtaken all political parties at the same time about why this time the delimitation process is different.
When the Constitution (Eighty Fourth Amendment) Act, 2002 was adopted by Parliament while the union government headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee was in power, the decision was to, first, continue the 1973 freeze on the total strength of the Lok Sabha (set at 545 seats) and, then, postpone the delimitation exercise till after 2026 or, rather, after the census conducted immediately after that date. In accordance with the terms of the 84th Amendment, which extended the provisions of the 43rd Amendment, the next census would be in 2031. The decision of the central government to indefinitely postpone the census due to have been conducted in 2021 and avoid announcing a schedule for the next census has contributed to speculation that the overdue population head count would be timed to suit the BJP’s political calendar.
The speculation is based on several assumptions. First, that the current regime is likely to take a decision to greatly increase the number of seats in the Lok Sabha as and when the delimitation exercise is initiated; and, second, that the delimitation exercise would begin after 2026 and in time for the 2029 Lok Sabha election, with the anticipated increase in seats likely to mainly benefit states that constitute the BJP’s political bastions, like Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar and Rajasthan.
Several estimates of the possible size of the post-delimitation Lok Sabha have been doing the rounds for years. The most frequently cited estimate – a staggering 848 seats – is by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which published a paper on India’s Emerging Crisis of Representation in 2019.
If scholars perceived a crisis of representation before 2019, before the 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament and state Assemblies became mandatory, the complexity of the exercise can only become deeper with the need to ensure better representation of women in legislative bodies.
It would not be fair to women if the delimitation and reservation exercise is a rushed job just because it is politically convenient for the ruling regime to schedule it in time for the next general election. Experts familiar with census operations say that it would take about three years from the start of the head count exercise to arrive at the necessary analysis of the data collected. The delimitation exercise is supposed to be based on the census data. And, additionally, this time the delimitation exercise will require identifying reserved constituencies for women in accordance with the law.
The process of delimitation is supposed to be consultative. Consultations regarding the ushering in of the first ever change, reservation of seats for women, is bound to require additional time. The Women’s Reservation Act has not defined how women’s representation will be worked out for the already reserved Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribes constituencies. A decision to greatly increase the number of seats would necessarily involve disputes over existing reservation criteria to which reservation for women will now have to be added.
States like Tamil Nadu and Kerala are apprehensive that there will be a decline in the number of seats in the Lok Sabha allotted to them and all the North East states, barring Assam, are upset that assessments do not indicate an increase in their representation in Parliament. Women, who have been oddly silent in the delimitation debate so far, need to make themselves heard at least now.
The delay in initiating the 2021 census on account of the COVID pandemic was understandable. Postponing the census to 2026 or any date thereafter has made things more difficult and politically controversial. All political parties – those in the opposition at the national level and the BJP as the dominant party in power – need to ensure that reservation for women is done with maximum consensus and minimum dissatisfaction during and after the delimitation of seats.
Whenever it is scheduled after the next Census, the delimitation exercise will be a historic moment in India’s parliamentary history and a breakthrough for women as political representatives. The first time ever that a change as fundamental as women’s reservation is put into effect needs to be smooth and empowering, not ugly and contentious.
Shikha Mukerjee is a senior journalist based in Kolkata.
