Centre weighs 50 per cent increase in Lok Sabha seats to advance women’s quota

The Centre is considering increasing Lok Sabha seats by 50 per cent while retaining existing inter-state seat ratios to address southern states' concerns. The move aims to facilitate implementation of the women's reservation law before the 2029 general elections

New Delhi: The government is learnt to be working on multiple formulations to increase the number of Lok Sabha seats for all states by 50 per cent to assuage the concerns of southern states, as it seeks to operationalise a fresh draft of the Constitution Amendment Bill on women’s quota law.

The draft is being readied keeping in mind the concerns of the southern states that a population-based delimitation exercise would shrink their political power in the Lok Sabha. The first Bill failed to clear the Lok Sabha test on April 17, as the government could not muster the two-thirds majority required to pass it.

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Building on the earlier Bill, the fresh draft is learnt to have proposed keeping the existing inter-state seat ratios intact based on the 1971 Census.

But this is one of the formulations the government is working on, and no final decision has been reached, sources said. Lok Sabha and Assembly seats will be redrawn based on the 2011 Census figures, as the numbers of the ongoing census are yet to come out.

The Bill will be tabled in Parliament only after the government is confident of the numbers, the sources said. As of now, the ruling NDA has around 300 MPs in the Lok Sabha with three vacancies. It needs 360 votes to achieve the two-thirds mark.

Under the current law, reservation for women would not be enforceable before 2034, as the process is tied to the completion of the delimitation exercise post the 2027 Census.

To implement it from the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, changes were needed in the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, or women’s reservation law.

According to the government’s plan, Lok Sabha seats will be increased to a maximum of 850 from the current 543 to “operationalise” the women’s quota law before the 2029 parliamentary polls following a delimitation exercise to be carried out on the basis of the last published census.

According to the Constitution Amendment Bill introduced in April, seats would also be increased in state and UT Assemblies to accommodate 33 per cent reservation for women.

The seats reserved for women in Lok Sabha and legislative Assemblies “shall be allotted by rotation to different constituencies in a state or Union territory”, the Bill said.