Parliament passed the Constitution (128th Amendment) Bill, 2023 which seeks to reserve one-third of the total number of seats for women in Lok Sabha, State Legislative Assemblies and Delhi Assembly.
- The Women’s Reservation Bill has been passed in the Rajya Sabha giving women 33 percent reservation in Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
Key points
- The Constitution (128th Amendment) Bill, or the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, and its six clauses were passed with all 214 members present in the Upper House voting in favour of them.
- The Rajya Sabha passed the Women’s Reservation Bill unanimously on September 21.
- The Lok Sabha had passed the Bill 20th September 2023. 454 members of the Lok Sabha supported the bill while only two members, the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s Asaduddin Owaisi and Syed Imtiyaz Jaleel, had opposed the Bill.
- The women’s reservation Bill is the first legislation to be cleared by both Houses in the new Parliament building.
Key provisions
- It seeks sub-reservation for the SCs, STs and Anglo Indians. The Bill asks for the insertion of a clause in Article 330 A that one-third of the seats reserved for SCs and STs in the Lok Sabha be reserved for women within these categories.
- Another clause asks for one-third of the total seats to be filled by direct election to the Lok Sabha for women.
- The Bill proposes to introduce new articles — 330A and 332A — in the Constitution. These new provisions will introduce the changes for Lok Sabha and Assemblies respectively.
- The Bill seeks the insertion in Clause 2 of Article 239 AA, a subsection which asks for reservation for women in the legislative assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi.
- The reservation will be for a period of 15 years from the date of commencement of the Act.
- The reservation of one-third of seats for women in Lok Sabha and State Assemblies shall come into effect after an exercise of delimitation is undertaken based on figures from the first Census that is conducted after the Act is enacted.
Delimitation
- Delimitation means the act or process of fixing limits or boundaries of territorial constituencies in a country to represent changes in population.
- The last delimitation exercise took place in 1976 and the current boundaries of Lok Sabha and State Assembly constituencies were drawn on the basis of the 2001 Census.
- The 42nd Amendment froze this delimitation exercise until the first Census after 2000 is published.
- The number of seats have remained frozen on the basis of the 1971 Census.
- Through a Constitutional amendment in 2002, a freeze was placed on delimitation, until the first Census is conducted after the year 2026.
- Article 82 provides for the readjustment of constituencies (number and boundaries) of both Lok Sabha and state Assemblies after every Census.
- Article 170(3) deals with composition of the Legislative Assemblies.
- Article 243D of the Constitution provides for reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and women in Panchayats.
