The Union government notified enforcement of The Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023, granting 33% reservation for women in legislatures. Effective April 16, measure mandates quota in Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
The Union government on April 16, issued a notification stating that The Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023 which provides 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies“shall come into force” from April 16.
The Act had already been published in the Gazette on September 28, 2023, following assent by President Droupadi Murmu. However, that earlier Gazette notification had made the enforcement timeline conditional. It had specified that a further notice would be issued to fix the date of implementation, stating: “It shall come into force on such date as the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint.”
A full 940 days after it cleared the Lok Sabha unanimously, and 939 days after it was approved by the Rajya Sabha, the Act came into force offering no public explanation for why this fresh April 16 notification was issued now particularly during the ongoing special session of Parliament.
The timing is crucial and, for many, confusing. The April 16 notification came only hours after the Union government introduced three Bills in Parliament that seek to connect women’s reservation, expansion of the Lok Sabha, and delimitation.
The Modi government has attempted to frame the opposition’s objections to this three-Bill package as resistance to women’s reservation. But opposition leaders argue that their support for women’s reservation has already been made clear especially during 2023. They also note that even if parts of the package fail, the 2023 women’s reservation law would still remain in effect.
Constitutional amendments, however, require a two-thirds majority in both houses. That means the three newly introduced Bills could still be defeated in Parliament, even as the earlier 2023 Act would continue to stand. With the 2023 law now notified, the implementation framework laid down in it tied to the census and delimitation exercise has been set in motion.
The opposition further suggests that if the new constitutional amendment Bills are not passed, women’s reservation may still proceed through the next steps, since the Delimitation Bill 2026, introduced on Thursday, is not a constitutional amendment. As a result, it can be approved with a simple majority.
While the 2023 law linked women’s reservation to the 2027 Census, the Bills introduced on Thursday propose a different approach one in which delimitation, Lok Sabha expansion, and women’s reservation could be linked to whichever Census Parliament decides.
That flexibility, combined with what critics call the Bills’ lack of clarity on the criteria for increasing the Lok Sabha from 540 to 850 has fed allegations that the NDA government is using women’s reservation strategically to gain an electoral advantage.
Women’s reservation in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies was incorporated into law in 2023. Yet, because the law did not provide a clear timeline and instead depended on a delimitation-related provision, uncertainty persisted.
Now, with the government seeking to push implementation in ways that critics argue could reshape India’s federal balance possibly reducing the political weight of southern states and other regions where population control has been comparatively more successful questions are intensifying.
On Thursday, following the notification of the 2023 Act, Congress MP Manish Tewari criticised the move, calling it unusual that a Bill originally gazetted in September 2023 had been re-notified after the suspension of Rule 66. He pointed out that Rule 66 provides that if a Bill dependent on the passage of another fails, the original legislation becomes infructuous. According to him, the re-notification after suspending this rule appeared to be a desperate attempt to safeguard the 106th Act in the event that the 131st Amendment does not pass.
In essence, critics see the April 16 notification as an attempt to preserve the 2023 reservation framework if the government’s broader three-Bill strategy does not succeed in Parliament.
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