One-third of seats for women: the Women's Reservation Act, 2023

Women have long been under-represented in India's legislatures relative to their share of the population, even though women already hold a large share of seats in panchayats, where reservation has operated for decades. The demand for reservation in Parliament and state assemblies dates back to the 1990s, with Bills introduced and lapsing across several Lok Sabhas. In September 2023, Parliament finally passed the measure, in a special session held in the new Parliament building.

The Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, popularly called the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, was introduced as the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Amendment) Bill on 19 September 2023 and received the President's assent on 28 September 2023. It inserts Articles 330A and 332A, reserving one-third of seats filled by direct election in the Lok Sabha and in state legislative assemblies, and in the Delhi Assembly, for women. One-third of the seats already reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are also to be reserved for women from those categories.

The reservation is not immediate. Article 334A provides that it will come into effect only after an exercise of delimitation is undertaken following the publication of the relevant figures of the first Census conducted after the Act comes into force. In practice, that means the Census must first be completed, its figures published, and constituencies redrawn, before the Election Commission can notify which specific seats will be reserved for women in a given election. The reservation is initially valid for 15 years, extendable by a law passed by Parliament.

The delay has been the main criticism. Supporters of the Act argue that linking reservation to delimitation is necessary, because reserved seats must be identified on the basis of current population and constituency boundaries, and because the Act also sits alongside the wider question of how many seats each state should have. Critics argue that a law passed in 2023, whose effect depends on a Census and delimitation that may take years, postpones a reform that could have been applied to the next general election.

The specific seats to be reserved had not been notified in the material checked for this note. The Act therefore remains, for now, a statute whose promise is clear but whose electoral effect is still to be tested. Its study value lies in that gap between enactment and implementation, which is common to many constitutional reforms.