Women’s quota, delimitation: Opposition rejects bill in Lok Sabha, first legislative defeat for NDA government

New Delhi: The united opposition on Friday rejected last-minute calls for a “conscience vote” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the home minister Amit ShahA proposal to enshrine a 50 per cent increase in Lok Sabha seats for all states in the Women’s Reservation Bill handed the government its first legislative defeat in 12 years, with the proposed law failing to get the required two-thirds vote in the House. Opposition parties claim that the bill, which promises quotas for women from 2029, is a ploy to cut the representation of southern states in LS, redraw the political map in favor of the BJP and delay the caste census. But Shah remains unconvinced by his assertion that under the proposed scheme, the southern state’s weightage in LS will go up slightly and the government is committed to caste enumeration. The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill received 298 votes in favor and 230 votes against. The bill requires the support of at least 352 House members to pass. As core bill fails, parliamentary affairs minister Kieron Rijiju It said two other bills related “substantially” to the main proposal, including one on demarcation, would be withdrawn.

Shah tells oppn, you will have nowhere to hide in electionsUnion Home Minister Amit Shah, while responding to the debate on the Constitutional Amendment Bill on women’s reservation and delimitation, said the two main reasons behind the bill are to ensure time-bound rollout of women’s reservation by 2029 and to truly implement the concept of “one person, one vote, one value”. Shah said the Malkajgiri LS seat in Telangana has over 39 lakh voters and highlighted that 127 constituencies have over 20 lakh voters. He dismissed opposition charges that delimitation would result in the southern states receiving less weight in the LS. On average, LS seats in the south have far fewer voters than those in the north. On caste quotas, Shah said, “The BJP government will follow the collective consciousness of the Parliament. There is no doubt about it.” For the BJP, representation and participation of the people of the country (in the legislature) are of utmost importance, marking their rare willingness to engage on the issue, he said. However, he ruled out quotas for Muslims, saying it violated the constitution. “We will not allow anyone to implement this.” As the prime minister did on Thursday, the home minister struck combative rhetoric on the issue of women’s quotas, warning the opposition of a possible backlash. “If you don’t vote for this bill, it will fail, but women in this country are seeing who is standing in their way. You will have nowhere to hide in the election.” The opposition will face the wrath of women, not just at the LS elections in 2029, but at every level, every election and everywhere.” He then scolded the opposition on X for celebrating the bill’s defeat. The most dramatic moment in his reply was when he accepted Congress MP KC Venugopal’s demand to enshrine in the bill a 50% increase in seats for each state. However, he was quick to reject Venugopal’s other demands to delink the women’s reservation bill from delimitation, saying denial of 2029 quota to women was a “tempting trap”. He responded positively to Rahul Gandhi’s statement about Congress supporting the cause of OBCs. “Congress is the most anti-OBC party,” Shah said, citing decisions such as not implementing the Karekar Commission recommendations on OBC reservation under Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi not acting on the Mandal Commission recommendations and Rajiv Gandhi’s opposition to the same. He said the Congress has never appointed a member of the OBC community as prime minister, while the BJP, under the leadership of Modi, has appointed a prime minister from an extremely backward caste. The Congress party and its India Bloc allies have a history of vetoing reservation legislation proposals five times since the idea was first mooted during the Narasimha Rao government and have sometimes relied on its allies to veto the proposals, he said, while recalling the Opposition’s stand on the Shahbano judgment and the triple talaq case. He said the Congress was instinctively opposed to all the Modi government’s signature initiatives – from the abolition of J&K’s special status to the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.