There is something profoundly disingenuous about the Opposition’s sudden outrage over the absence of a sub-quota for Other Backward Classes in the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (106th Constitutional Amendment Act, 2023).
This is the very law they supported—without amendment, without dissent, without even a procedural insistence that such a provision be included. The same voices that voted for it now seek to undermine it—not by opposing it outright, but by suffocating it with post facto conditions.
To understand the scale of this opportunism, one must return to what the law actually provides—not what is being politically projected. The Adhiniyam mandates that one-third of all seats in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies be reserved for women, with these seats to be determined after delimitation and rotated periodically.
This rotation is not incidental, it is foundational. Reserved constituencies will change after each delimitation exercise, ensuring that no seat is permanently locked and that representation is geographically distributed over time. In other words, the framework is deliberately designed to prevent political monopolies over “safe” reserved seats, while expanding opportunity across regions.
But like all rotation-based systems, it comes with trade-offs. The shifting of constituencies may reduce long-term incumbency incentives, as representatives cannot assume continuity from the same seat. That is a structural feature—not a flaw discovered in hindsight.
If the inclusion of OBC women was truly non-negotiable, why did Rahul Gandhi not insist on it in Parliament in 2023? Why no amendment under Article 368? Why no attempt to constitutionally embed OBC reservation alongside SC/ST in Articles 330A and 332A? Why pass the Bill first and discover its “defects” later? The answer is neither legal nor moral—it is political. At that moment, supporting the Bill carried dividends. Today, delaying its implementation serves a different calculus.
A brief historical reminder is instructive. In the mid-1980s, a Supreme Court judgement affirming maintenance rights for a divorced Muslim woman was effectively neutralised by legislation under a government led by Rajiv Gandhi. Today, his son has gone further.
The contradiction is glaring. In September 2023, Rahul Gandhi demanded immediate implementation—without delimitation, without sequencing, without constitutional groundwork. Today, the same voices insist on a caste census, a redesign of the law, and additional layers of constitutional engineering that would inevitably push implementation into 2034. What was urgency has now become obstruction.
The constitutional reality was never in doubt. The 106th Amendment extends reservation to women within categories already recognised by the Constitution—Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. It does not create an OBC political category because such a category does not exist in legislative reservation in that constitutional form. To introduce it would require a fresh constitutional architecture, a legally defensible enumeration and a framework capable of surviving judicial scrutiny.
If representation was truly the concern, it would begin within party structures. The Samajwadi Party, which traces its ideological roots to Ram Manohar Lohia, offers a telling case. Under Mulayam Singh Yadav and continuing under Akhilesh Yadav, the party evolved into a tightly held familial network. At various points, nearly 18 members of the extended family occupied political office or positions of influence. This is not empowerment. This is consolidation.
So the question is unavoidable—what stops such parties from giving even a third of their tickets to grassroots OBC or Muslim women today? Why must representation always be demanded from the Constitution, but never practised internally?
Even Bihar’s example underlines the difference between symbolism and systemic change. Rabri Devi became the state’s first woman Chief Minister, but not as part of a structured commitment to women’s or OBC empowerment.
Her elevation was a political contingency managed by her husband, Lalu Prasad Yadav.
Then comes the claim that delimitation will hurt southern states or regions like West Bengal. This argument collapses under both constitutional logic and basic arithmetic. Delimitation was always going to happen; it is a constitutional necessity long deferred. The real question is not whether it happens, but how.
Here lies the irony. The only scenario in which southern states could have actually seen a relative decline in seats would have been a strict population-based redistribution using Census data like 2011 or a future post-2026 count—where higher-growth states would gain disproportionately.
What is being proposed now is the opposite: a calibrated expansion that protects the existing proportions. No state loses. Everyone gains.
To oppose this framework is to reject a model that actually safeguards federal balance. It is a political self-goal—denying one’s own states additional representation and a stronger voice in Parliament. At the heart of delimitation lies a foundational democratic principle: one person, one vote, one value. India’s population has grown dramatically between 1971 and today. Representation cannot remain frozen in time while the nation expands at scale. To resist delimitation would be to resist the very principle of democratic parity.
India has waited nearly three decades for women’s reservation to move from promise to provision. The pathway that exists is clear, constitutional, and executable. But when a reform meant to empower half the country is stalled through political gamesmanship, the verdict is equally clear.
In the end, it is not a Bill that has been betrayed. It is India’s women. It is India’s daughters.
Shazia Ilmi
National Spokesperson, BJP
(Views are personal)