Modi Government Suffers Setback as Constitutional Amendment Defeated in Parliament

For the first time in nearly 12 years since Narendra Modi came to power, a government-sponsored constitutional amendment was defeated in the Indian parliament.

“Modi’s downfall has begun,” said Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of the eastern state of West Bengal and one of India’s key opposition leaders.

The next day, major newspaper headlines were of two kinds. Most said the government’s bill for women’s reservation was defeated. Only a few highlighted that it was a constituency delimitation-linked bill that failed to get passed.

The Modi government had clubbed together two bills with different levels of support from opposition parties. While all major opposition parties support reserving seats for women in legislatures, delimitation or rearranging constituency boundaries has been a contentious issue. Almost all of them oppose delimitation the way Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) allegedly plans to go about it.

The Modi government alleged that the opposition parties foiled their plan to legislatively empower women. Modi warned the opposition of consequences, highlighting that women’s reservation is not confined to the political class alone, but has seeped into popular consciousness.  Women who have benefited from reservations in rural local self-governments feel empowered. “Those who oppose it (reservation) will have to pay consequences for a long time to come,” he said.

The opposition celebrated their victory against what they described as the Modi government’s delimitation “conspiracy.” The Congress, India’s main opposition party, demanded that the government will have to implement women’s reservation under the existing strength of the House, without linking it with census or delimitation.

The government’s declared goal was to expand the Lok Sabha from 543 to around 850 seats, enable delimitation without completion of the just-launched census, and facilitate the implementation of 33 percent women’s reservation in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, and state assemblies from 2029 onwards.

The conflict was mainly over linking delimitation with the latest census. Since 1976, India has had a freeze on the latest population-based delimitation. To encourage proper implementation of population control measures taken in the mid-1970s, the government decided that parliamentary constituencies could be redrawn within every state, but each state’s share of parliamentary seats would remain the same.

Now, thanks to unequal population growth in different regions over the past five decades, this has created a situation where every Lok Sabha member of parliament (MP) in Madhya Pradesh, one of India’s high population growth states, caters to a population of 2.5 million on an average, whereas an average MP in Tamil Nadu, one of India’s low population growth states, works for a population of 1.85 million.

A latest population-based census will benefit northern, central and western states — predominantly the Hindi-speaking heartland — where population grew faster than southern and eastern states.

The Hindi heartland states have been the BJP’s traditional stronghold, while their expansion to the east and south is more recent.

The Modi government argued that population-based delimitation restores “one person, one vote, one value” after 50 years of freeze. However, the opposition sees it as unfair to the southern and eastern states that fared better in implementing the government’s population control policies.

They fear that since their population has grown at a lower pace than the Hindi heartland states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, their share of parliamentary seats would reduce, ultimately weakening their position in the federal system.

Besides, the opposition also objected to the provision that the government or the parliament could decide the timing of census and delimitation exercises in place of the constitutionally-bound timelines.

Amidst this war of words, two questions intrigue political observers the most. First, why did the Modi government introduce the bill in parliament in the first place when it did not have the required two-thirds majority? And second, now that the bill has been defeated, what lies ahead for both women’s reservation and legislative delimitation.

The women’s reservation bill was passed in 2023, roughly six months ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections. However, instead of offering the reservation of seats for women in that election itself, the government postponed it until delimitation was completed.

Why did the government suddenly revive the women’s reservation bill to accelerate delimitation, that too without ensuring a majority?

The bill fell 54 votes short of the required numbers — not even a close contest.

Several opposition party leaders think the government wanted to kill two birds with one stone. Had the bill passed, the increase in seats in northern, central and western India would have won the BJP massive popularity in the Hindi heartland states. In failure, the government had the option to blame the opposition for stalling women’s reservation and use it for the ongoing state elections in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.

“Of course, it was to distract the opposition leaders from the Bengal and Tamil Nadu election campaign,” said an opposition parliamentarian from West Bengal. “But, knowing the Modi government’s unpredictability, no one could have taken it lightly.”

The Modi government’s defeat, nevertheless, is only temporary. The constitutional freeze on delimitation based on the 1971 census ends this year. After the ongoing census concludes, likely next year, a new Delimitation Commission will almost certainly be formed to redraw constituency boundaries based on the latest census.

This is constitutionally mandated and cannot be stopped unless the opposition parties manage to force the government to reimpose a freeze. In 2021, when the initial 25-year freeze lapsed, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s BJP government reimposed it for another 25 years.

Article 82 of the Indian Constitution stipulates that state-wise seat allocation cannot be readjusted until the relevant figures for the census taken after the year 2026 have been published.

By amending Article 82, the government wanted to bypass the “post-2026 census” clause. This would have enabled them to immediately effect the delimitation based on the 2011 census data.

The first phase of the 2027 census has already started. However, caste enumeration is also part of the current census, and that would take place in the latter half of 2027. While some of its data sets are expected to be released later in 2027 itself, some might take till early 2028 to be published.

This leaves a rather short window for completing the delimitation process before the 2029 parliamentary elections. A 2025 paper pointed out that delimitation is an “extremely lengthy process,” which can become time-consuming. It cited that the 2008 delimitation took 6 years and 4 months to come out with the final delimitation order.

Now that the census process has been digitized, delimitation, too, can be conducted faster. But it would still take a significant time, administrative officials believe.

With this scenario, the heat over delimitation looks all set to rise once the census reports are published.