An analysis of the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, its constitutional link to delimitation, and the road ahead after Parliament rejects the fast-track route in April 2026
Author: Kshama Shukla, City Academy Law College, Lucknow
To the Point
In 2023, Parliament finally did something it had promised for twenty-seven years: it passed a law reserving one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies. But the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, popularly called theNari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, came with a catch buried in its own text. The reservation would not begin the day the law was signed. It would begin only after a fresh Census was conducted and a fresh delimitation exercise, redrawing constituency boundaries, was completed based on that Census.
That single clause, Article 334A, turned a historic reform into a waiting game. This article explains what the law actually says, why delimitation has become the bottleneck, what the government tried to do about it in 2026, why that attempt failed, and what women candidates, voters, and political parties can realistically expect between now and the next Lok Sabha election.
Use of Legal Jargon
A few terms recur throughout this discussion and are worth defining precisely before going further.
• Delimitation: the process, carried out by a Delimitation Commission under Articles 82 and 170 of the Constitution, of redrawing the boundaries of parliamentary and assembly constituencies to reflect current population distribution, and of determining how many seats each State gets.
• Article 334A: the provision inserted by the 106th Amendment, which reserves one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha, State Assemblies, and the Delhi Assembly, and ties the commencement of that reservation to delimitation carried out after the “first Census taken after the commencement of this Act.”
• Special majority: under Article 368, a constitutional amendment requires a majority of the total membership of a House and not less than two-thirds of the members present and voting, a considerably higher bar than that for an ordinary law.
• Seat freeze: since the 42nd and 84th Amendments, the total number of Lok Sabha seats and their distribution among States has been frozen, first at the 1971 Census figures and later extended, precisely so that States that slowed population growth would not be penalised with fewer seats.
• Rotation of reserved seats: under the 2023 Act, seats reserved for women are not permanent; they rotate to different constituencies after each delimitation exercise, on a basis Parliament may determine by law.
The Proof
The legislative record bears out the sequence described above. The Women’s Reservation Bill was first introduced in 1996, and lapsed repeatedly over the following decades despite passing the Rajya Sabhain 2010. The Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023 was finally passed by both Houses, 454 votes to 2 in the Lok Sabha, and unanimously in the Rajya Sabha and received Presidential assent on 28 September 2023, notably as the first legislation passed in the new Parliament building.
Yet the Act’s commencement clause meant it sat dormant. It was only formally notified into force on 16 April 2026. On that same day, the government introduced a coordinated package of three bills: the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026; the Delimitation Bill, 2026; and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, designed to remove the Census-and-delimitation trigger and instead base delimitation on the 2011 Census, so that the reservation could take effect in time for the 2029 general election.
The package also proposed expanding the Lok Sabha from its current ceiling of 550 seats to 850 seats, with roughly 273 of the expanded seats reserved for women. This required lifting the seat freeze that Article 82’s third proviso currently attaches to the first Census after 2026.
The plan did not survive Parliament. On 17 April 2026, the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026 was put to a vote in the Lok Sabha and fell short of the two-thirds special majority required under Article 368. Of 528 members present, it secured only 298 votes in favour against 230 against, well below the 352 needed. With the constitutional amendment defeated, the two dependent ordinary bills,the Delimitation Bill and the Union Territories Laws Bill, were withdrawn as a consequence, since they had no independent legal basis without the amendment.
The principal ground of opposition was federal, not feminist: several southern and some north-eastern States argued that basing the expanded Lok Sabha on 2011 Census population figures would reward States that had not controlled population growth and would proportionately shrink the political weight of States that had. This is precisely the anxiety the seat freeze was designed to prevent in the first place, and it proved decisive.
As matters stand, Article 334A’s original text remains the operative law. The reservation is legally tied to delimitation following the first Census after 2026, a Census whose Phase II population enumeration is presently scheduled for February 2027, with a reference date of 1 March 2027. On experience, the last Delimitation Commission, working from 2001 Census data, took roughly five years to complete its task. A comparable timeline this time would place actual implementation of women’s reservation well past the 2029 general election, and quite plausibly around 2034.
Abstract
This article examines the constitutional design and current status of women’s political reservation in India under the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023. It traces the provision’s twenty-seven-year legislative history, explains the operation of Article 334A and its dependence on Census-linked delimitation, and analyses the government’s 2026 attempt to accelerate implementation through the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill and its allied legislation. It then discusses that package’s defeat in the Lok Sabha for want of a special majority, the underlying federalism concerns that produced the defeat, and the resulting uncertainty over when, if ever, before the 2030s one-third of India’s legislative seats will actually be occupied by women. The article closes by outlining the realistic pathways that remain open to Parliament and the questions likely to shape the next round of debate.
Case Laws
Litigation on this subject has so far been limited, largely because the substantive reservation has not yet taken effect and courts have been reluctant to compel a legislative timetable.
• A writ petition challenging the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023 was filed shortly after its passage, arguing that reservation could not lawfully be withheld once Parliament had enacted it with overwhelming support. The petitioner also sought a direction for implementation ahead of the 2024 general election.
• The Supreme Court declined to direct immediate implementation before the 2024 election, and the petition was ultimately dismissed as infructuous after the petitioner’s counsel confirmed that what had originally been challenged as a Bill had, by the time of hearing, already become enacted law — leaving nothing further for the Court to strike down or compel at that stage.
More broadly, the framework for judicial review here draws on the Court’s settled position, developed across decades of delimitation and reservation jurisprudence, that the manner and timing of giving effect to a constitutional reservation is a matter of legislative and executive policy, reviewable for manifest arbitrariness or unreasonable delay but not ordinarily substitutable by judicial direction. Given that the 2026 legislative package to accelerate implementation has now failed in Parliament rather than in court, any future challenge is more likely to centre on whether continued delay itself becomes constitutionally unreasonable, than on the validity of the original Act.
Conclusion
Women’s reservation in India is now in an unusual position: fully enacted in law, formally in force since April 2026, and yet with no seat reserved for a woman anywhere in the country. The gap between enactment and operation is not an oversight; it is built into Article 334A by design, and Parliament’s attempt to close that gap by delinking reservation from Census-based delimitation has just failed at the first hurdle.
The defeat of the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026 does not kill the reform the underlying 106th Amendment remains valid law but it does confirm that the fastest route to 2029 implementation is currently closed. What remains open, at least in principle, is a narrower amendment restricted to Article 334A alone, without the seat-expansion and 2011-Census delimitation that triggered federal objections; continued reliance on the original post-2026-Census timeline, which realistically points toward the 2030s; or voluntary steps by political parties to give women a much larger share of tickets ahead of any constitutional trigger. Each option carries different political costs, and none commands consensus today.
For law students, practitioners, and civil society groups tracking this space, the issue to watch is not the 2023 Act itself, which is settled, but whichever narrower amendment Parliament attempts next, and whether the federalism objections that sank the 2026 package can be addressed without reopening the seat-freeze question altogether.
FAQ
1. Is the Women’s Reservation Act currently in force?
The Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023 was formally notified into force on 16 April 2026. However, its central operative provision,the actual reservation of seats, does not take effect until delimitation is carried out after the next Census, so no seats are reserved in practice yet.
2. Why is reservation linked to delimitation at all?
Article 334A ties commencement to delimitation because reserved seats have to be allotted among constituencies, and Parliament chose to do that allotment as part of a broader exercise of redrawing constituency boundaries on updated population data, rather than reserving seats within the existing, decades-old constituency map.
3. What was the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026 trying to do?
It aimed to remove the requirement that delimitation wait for the post-2026 Census, allowing delimitation instead on 2011 Census data, expand the Lok Sabha from 550 to 850 seats, and thereby make women’s reservation operational in time for the 2029 general election.
4. Why did that Bill fail?
As a constitutional amendment, it needed a two-thirds special majority of members present and voting under Article 368. It secured 298 of the 528 votes cast, short of the roughly 352 required, largely because several States objected that using 2011 population data would reduce their relative representation.
5. When might women’s reservation now actually take effect?
On the current, unamended timeline, implementation depends on delimitation following the Census whose population enumeration is scheduled for February 2027. Based on how long the previous Delimitation Commission took, realistic estimates place actual implementation closer to the early-to-mid 2030s unless Parliament passes a narrower, differently designed amendment in the meantime.
6. Does the setback affect the SC/ST women’s sub-quota within the reservation?
No. The one-third reservation for SC/ST women within the SC/ST quota is part of the same 2023 Act and is subject to the same commencement condition; it has not been separately affected by the 2026 Bill’s defeat.