- Sonia Gandhi says delimitation, not women’s reservation, is the core issue for calling a special session
- Gandhi criticises the government’s hurried approach to amend the Women’s Reservation Bill and delimitation
- She highlights delays in Census 2021 and its impact on food security entitlements and policy planning
Delimitation, and not reservation for women in legislatures, is the real issue over which the Centre has called a special session of Parliament this week, Congress parliamentary party chairperson Sonia Gandhi has said. In an op-ed in The Hindu newspaper, Gandhi said the government's delimitation plan, according to unofficially available information, "is extremely dangerous and an assault on the Constitution itself".
This comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote to all parties, seeking support for an amendment to the Women's Reservation Bill. The Women's Reservation Bill, or Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, provides for one-third reservation for women in legislative bodies. It was passed in Parliament in 2023. A proposed legislation seeks to delink its implementation from the 2027 Census and base it on the 2011 Census to ensure it comes into force before the 2029 general election.
Gandhi has said the Prime Minister is reaching out to the Opposition to support Bills that it wants to "bulldoze in a special session of Parliament when the election campaign in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal will be at its peak". "There can be only one reason for the extraordinary hurry, which is to derive political advantage and place the Opposition on the defensive. The Prime Minister is, as usual, being economical with the truth," she wrote.
The Congress veteran said it was the Centre that had linked the Women's Reservation Bill with the next Census. "The Opposition had not asked for this condition. In fact, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Shri Mallikarjun Kharge, had forcefully demanded that the reservation provision be implemented from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections itself. For reasons best known to itself, the government did not agree," she wrote.
"Now, we are given to understand that Article 334-A will be amended to make women's reservation applicable from 2029 itself. Why did it take the Prime Minister 30 months to make his U-turn? And why can he not wait a few weeks to convene the special session? Opposition leaders have written to the government not once but thrice requesting that an all-party meeting be convened after the last phase of elections is over in West Bengal on April 29, to discuss what the new proposals of the government are. But that perfectly reasonable request has been turned down. Instead, the Prime Minister has resorted to writing op-eds, making appeals to political parties, and organising sammelans. It is an underhand tactic that reflects the Prime Minister's one-upmanship and his 'my way or the highway" approach to decision-making," Gandhi added.
The Congress leader contrasted the Centre's handling of the Women's Reservation Bill and how former Prime Minister and her husband Rajiv Gandhi's government brought laws for women's reservation in elections to panchayats and nagarpalikas. "The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 stands on the shoulders of this achievement."
Gandhi said the Narendra Modi government kept postponing the Census that was due in 2021. "One consequence of this has been that over 10 crore people have been deprived of their legal entitlements under the National Food Security Act, 2013 that provides the basis for the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana. Census operations have begun only after an inexplicable delay of five years," she wrote.
"It is being proudly claimed that it is a digital Census. Senior officials have themselves publicly declared that because of its digital nature, most of the population enumeration numbers will be available in 2027 itself. The government's excuses for its tearing hurry to call this session and conduct delimitation are evidently hollow," she added.
Gandhi also said that the "propaganda" that a caste census will delay the publication of the Census 2027 is "just not true". "In fact, the Prime Minister's real intention now is to further delay and derail the caste census," she said.
"The special session is scheduled to begin on April 16. Yet till now, there has been no official proposal shared with MPs on what exactly the government wants the session to consider. It appears that some formula for delimitation is being suggested. Any delimitation must be preceded by a Census exercise as in the past. And it goes without saying that any delimitation involving an increase in the strength of the Lok Sabha must be politically - and not just arithmetically - equitable. States that have been pioneers in family planning, and smaller States, must not be placed at an absolute or relative disadvantage. A proportionate increase may, in fact, result in the loss of relative influence because the difference in absolute numbers get magnified," Gandhi wrote.
The Congress leader said the monsoon session of Parliament will begin in mid-July. "The heavens will not fall if the government were to call an all-party meeting after April 29, to discuss its proposals with the Opposition, allowing time for a public debate, and then have the Constitution Amendment Bills considered in the monsoon session. There is simply no justification, except narrative management during troubled times, for this tearing hurry to bulldoze extremely far-reaching changes to our polity. The process is deeply flawed and anti-democratic. Reservation for women is not the issue here. That has already been settled. The real issue is delimitation which, based on the information unofficially available, is extremely dangerous and an assault on the Constitution itself," she wrote.
Earlier, the Prime Minister wrote that the passage of the Women's Reservation Bill in 2023 was a memorable moment that reflected the unity in Parliament. "I consider that day an important and inspiring milestone in India's Parliamentary journey," he said. "After extensive deliberations, we have reached the conclusion that the time has now come to implement the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam in its true spirit across the country. It is imperative that the 2029 Lok Sabha elections and Assembly elections are conducted with women's reservation in place. This will infuse new energy into India's democratic institutions and strengthen public trust. It will also ensure greater participation and representation in governance," he said.
