“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive.” This Walter Scott quote is a fine summary of the events of the past week. On the evening of April 18, a day after the decisive defeat of the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, the Prime Minister announced a broadcast to the nation. In this 30-minute “address”, the Prime Minister named and blamed the Indian National Congress close to 60 times. Those expecting an appeal founded upon course correction were again left surprised to hear yet another attempt to mislead the nation and the old rhetoric of perpetually blaming the Opposition. The speech ended with a characteristic flourish: The Prime Minister asking forgiveness of women voters.
That no one was taken in by this is perhaps a testament to the fact that the BJP grossly overestimated the power of its propaganda machine and of headline management. It is clear these tactics have reached their expiry date. Also, it is an uncontested fact, borne out by public record, that the Opposition has spoken unanimously in favour of women’s reservation without caveats.
The 131st Amendment Bill was not a Women’s Reservation Bill. It had a singular and clear objective: To ensure a staggering increase of 50 per cent in the strength of the Lok Sabha. Of the eight substantive clauses in the Bill, Clauses 3, 4 and 5, amending Articles 81, 82 and 170, deal with seat expansion and the dismantling of the delimitation freeze. Women’s reservation appears only in Clause 8, the last substantive provision. Even by the government’s own formula, they intended to establish a delimitation commission, carry out the delimitation exercise, increase the number of seats from 543 to 850 for the Lok Sabha and entirely change India’s democratic landscape.
And what would this increase in the number of parliamentary seats actually mean? It would have meant that the smaller states would lose virtually all say in the parliamentary balance. It would have meant the silencing of the voices of smaller northern states like Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as also the seven northeastern states from Assam to Tripura. It would have meant that Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the engines of India’s revenue and reform, would be penalised for their success. The Prime Minister told the nation, again and again, that “no state’s share will be reduced”. But this Bill contained nothing of that sort. Even the Home Minister had to concede on the floor of Parliament, “Give me one hour and I will make this change”, but its absence and the promise of subsequent correction were telling signs. Indeed, which promise of reform has this government kept? After being promised Rs 15 lakh in every Indian’s bank account, and that Rs 80 lakh crore would be brought back from offshore accounts, and then being told these were “jumlas”, every citizen is tired and distrusting.
I make this argument as a Member of Parliament who supported, with conviction, the original 106th Amendment in 2023, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam itself. That Bill passed the Lok Sabha 454 to two, and the Rajya Sabha 214 to nil. Not a single Congress member voted against it. The notion now being peddled from every government microphone that Congress is opposed to women’s reservation is contradicted by Congress’s own voting record, by Sonia Gandhi’s widely acclaimed intervention in that very debate, and by the founding architecture of this reform itself. A reform that began, let it never be forgotten, under a Congress government, with the 73rd and 74th Amendments securing one-third reservation for women in panchayats and municipalities in 1992, and with the first version of the Women’s Reservation Bill being passed in the Rajya Sabha under the UPA II government.
If, then, the government is sincere about implementing women’s reservation by 2029, the path is open and obvious. It requires only one act of legislative honesty: Bring the women’s reservation provision as a standalone amendment, decoupled from the expansion of Parliament and the dismantling of the delimitation freeze. Bring a clean Bill. Bring it tomorrow. We will vote for it, as in 2023. So, I expect, will the DMK, the Trinamool Congress, the Samajwadi Party, and every other formation named in the Saturday night address to the nation. The support will present itself once more in the division lobbies, and the daughters of India will have their seats without the federal compact being torched as the price of admission.
Women’s reservation was a Trojan horse. And when it was exposed as such, the government had no choice but to deflect blame. Why did no advisers inform them of the obvious shortcomings of trying to rewrite a decades-long public record with rhetoric?
There is the good of the Indian people and there is the good of the ruling party. Seldom do the two intersect. And in this case, the regime is flustered because the Indian people saw this dichotomy, and the Opposition simply could not betray that faith.
The writer is a Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha and an advocate at the Supreme Court
