A Bill Failed; A Mask Fell

No tears were shed over the fate of the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill in the Lok Sabha last Friday (April 17, 2026). It was apparent that the bill seeking 33 percent reservation for women was not the central issue even though the Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were trying to make the nation believe that it was so. There had been no disagreement among the parties sitting on two sides of the dividing line over quota for women. In fact, a bill to this effect had been passed by the Lok Sabha in 2023 itself. Strangely enough, it was presented to the President only on Thursday for gazette notification.

The opposition centred around Delimitation Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, that sought to reshape the way constituencies across the nation would be distributed among states and by extension, how power would be shared in the national legislature. The BJP had used all the stealth and chicanery at its disposal to mislead the nation about the intent and purpose of the bill while several major states were witnessing the elections.

The undue haste in calling a special session of the Parliament was meant to take advantage of the chaos in the ranks of opposition as several constituents of the INDIA bloc were face to face in the state election even while remaining united at the Centre. And the Opposition raised the right poser: why the haste to push through a controversial Constitutional amendment when the 2026-27 Census is still under way and the delimitation was mandated to be based on fresh Census figures.

The mockery that the BJP made of the parliamentary process now lies exposed for all to see. All that it gained was a propaganda point at the hustings against the Opposition in states going to polls on April 23 and 29. The BJP has failed in ramming through the Bill in the Parliament and thereby gain an opportunity to gerrymander the constituencies all across the nation, as it managed to do in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir.

It was patently wrong on the part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address the nation a day after the bill failed to muster the two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha where he tried to tarnish the Opposition as anti-women. The Central Election Commission (CEC) ought to have taken notice of the fact as an address to the nation at that juncture constituted an infringement of the code of conduct for the election in force. But as is evident by its own conduct, the CEC’s partisanship is now a folklore without a parallel in the electoral history of the nation.