Even as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister issued a “warning” on behalf of the people of his state to Prime Minister Narendra Modi against “bulldozing” a Constitutional amendment related to the Women’s Reservation Bill in the upcoming Special Session of Parliament, the Congress said it is all for the proposed amendments but the proposed Bill was “bristled with contradictions”.
Shortly after texts of the key Bills, scheduled to be tabled in Parliament during its three-day sitting starting Thursday emerged, Telangana CM Revanth Reddy, in an open letter to PM Modi before the texts of the proposed Bills were out, pushed for “broad-based consultations and consensus building”, urging him to convene an all-party meeting at the earliest, especially over the impact of delimitation on Southern states.
“The day after tomorrow, April 16, a special session of Parliament is… forcibly being convened in the midst of elections in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. In this session, the Union government intends to bulldoze through a Constitutional amendment on delimitation. From the beginning, we have cautioned against this,” Stalin said in Tamil in a video posted on X subtitled in English.
“When the Union government urged us to control population growth, to have smaller families, and to follow family planning measures, we complied. Is this now the punishment for having done what was asked of us with discipline? We demanded that the Honourable Prime Minister provide a clear assurance in Parliament that southern states would not be affected. There has been no response,” he added.
Accusing the BJP-led NDA of moving ahead with the move “unilaterally”, he termed the “hurried attempt” to push through legislative business related to delimitation a “blatant assault on democracy by the BJP government” as well as a direct assault on states.
“…our Members of Parliament will participate. But if anything is done which harms Tamil Nadu or that disproportionately enhances the political power of northern states, we in Tamil Nadu will not remain silent… Every family will take to the streets… this is a warning,” Stalin said.
Reddy, meanwhile, sought a national, political consensus on increasing seats in the Lok Sabha with a hybrid model and an immediate implementation of women’s reservation, without linking it to increase of seats. “Regarding the Women’s Reservation Bill, I state in unequivocal terms that the Congress fully supports it. Kindly immediately implement it for the Lok Sabha, as is, with current 543 seats, and even for all Assemblies. The political empowerment of women is not merely a legislative reform but a moral imperative of our polity,” Reddy said.
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“Regarding delimitation, there have been delimitations before without changing the number of seats. The country can undertake such an exercise. The real contentious issue is the proposal to increase Lok Sabha seats to 850 seats and this to be done on a pro rata basis,” he said.
“An increase in seats based on pro rata, without considering economic contribution and socio and human developmental outcomes, will lead to a severe and irreversible distortion in the federal balance of our country. Fair regional representation and role in national matters is crucial to building a strong Viksit Bharat” the Telangana CM stated.
Accusing the Centre of having not fully and carefully analysed or assessed the consequences of this proposal, especially on the southern states, Reddy sought to emphasise that the states of Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry and Kerala, over past several decades, have consciously adopted population stabilisation, improved public health, and higher policies aimed at human development outcomes.
“These efforts were undertaken in alignment with national priorities and have contributed significantly to India’s overall progress. However, under the present proposal, these very states are being structurally disadvantaged and politically unempowered… it will result in a systemic shift in political power” he said.
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Senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi told The Indian Express, “The Bills received late on April 14 are bristling with contradictions, errors and unsustainable illegalities. Absence of states’ respective proportions is only one of these glaring omissions. All the bloopers shall be pointed out while fully endorsing and asking for women’s reservation on the basis of the 2010 and 2023 initiatives and Bills.”
RJD MP Manoj Jha said the documents placed before MPs “offer little clarity”. “Even widely discussed indications from within and around Parliament find no reflection in the text. This opacity raises a reasonable apprehension that the government is withholding its full intent, making the urgency around the amendment appear more façade than reform. In effect, the proposal opens the door to early delimitation and a substantial expansion of the Lok Sabha” he said.
“Yet, despite repeated assurances, it provides no safeguard to preserve the existing inter-state balance of seats, lifting the long-standing freeze based on the 1971 Census without clarity on its implications. More concerningly, it shifts the choice of the Census for seat reallocation from a Constitutional guarantee to ordinary legislation, subject to a simple parliamentary majority,” he added.
Trinamool Congress (TMC) Deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha Sagarika Ghosh linked the move to the upcoming West Bengal and Tamil Nadu Assembly polls. “The attempt to bulldoze a delimitation exercise under the guise of women’s representation assaults federalism and will result in the BJP getting wiped out from Bengal and Tamil Nadu after the elections,” she told The Indian Express.
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CPI(M) Leader in Rajya Sabha John Brittas told The Indian Express that the Bills being introduced in the name of implementing women’s reservation are a “death warrant for federal India”. “The accompanying delimitation Bill, presented as part of this exercise, would strip southern states — which have successfully implemented population control measures — of their rightful political power,” he added..
Meanwhile, sources said PM Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah were likely to figure among the key speakers participating in a discussion on the Women’s Reservation Bill during the session.
Sources added that while 18 hours had been allocated for the discussion in the Lok Sabha, ten hours had been set aside for the purpose in the Rajya Sabha.
