Women's reservation in legislatures should not have been linked to delimitation and the 33 per cent quota provided under the Act could have been implemented immediately, former Delhi Policy Group Director Radha Kumar said on Friday.
The author was speaking at a webinar on 'Bottlenecks in the Implementation of the Women's Reservation Bill 2023 and the Delimitation Bill 2026,' organised by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
Kumar said the 33 per cent reservation was a "flat rate" and had no connection with the size of the legislature or population figures.
"If it was connected to population, we would be talking about representation of 48-49 per cent, which is the population of women in this country," she said, adding that the reservation could be implemented whether the Lok Sabha has 543 seats or an expanded House of around 850 members.
Kumar said the provisions linking implementation of women's reservation with census and delimitation should have been removed during the 2023 parliamentary debate.
"States which have managed to control population growth should not be penalised. That has been an established principle in India's census and delimitation exercises, and there is no reason why it should be discarded," she said.
Kumar suggested a two-pronged approach for future delimitation — maintaining equitable representation while giving "positive points" to states that have improved welfare indicators and managed population growth.
She said demographic experts could devise a suitable formula for this.
On delimitation, Kumar said the country needs safeguards against political or communal gerrymandering, and referred to past exercises in Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, to allege concerns over representation and community balance.
"Every community has a right to be represented in our country and vote as equal citizens," she said.
Kumar wondered how expansion of the Lok Sabha to around 850 members could impact parliamentary functioning and the quality of deliberation.
Whether a larger House would leave enough space for meaningful debate and scrutiny, she wondered, and insisted Parliament must remain a forum for discussing national and federal issues.
"Are you going to turn Parliament into a rubber stamp? Is there going to be room for consideration? "You will have to double the sittings; do MPs want that? They have to balance the time they spend in their constituency and in Delhi.
"The Lok Sabha is meant to discuss federal and national issues. For that, you need a smaller number that can actually debate at great length and take inputs from Vidhan Sabhas," Kumar said.
Congress MP from Warangal, Kadiyam Kavya, said that if the Women's Reservation Bill had been implemented in 2024, women would already have received 33 per cent representation in Parliament.
Kavya said population-based delimitation could disadvantage southern states that had successfully controlled population growth.
"States that have controlled population growth should not be punished. Even today, we see differences between northern and southern regions," she said.
Journalist and author Ruhi Tewari said the delay in implementing women's reservation for nearly four decades reflected how the issue had been caught in political debates despite repeated claims of intent to empower women.
She said the impact of reservation at the grassroots level through Panchayati Raj institutions demonstrated that political representation goes beyond numbers.
"Initially, reservation in panchayats was mocked, with people saying women were being controlled by men. But what we often do not appreciate is the impact at the grassroots level," she said.
Tewari added that local-level reservations helped create a political constituency of women and contributed to greater mobilisation among women voters, though the full impact on empowerment could take decades.
The bill passed in 2023 linked its implementation to the completion of a delimitation exercise after the first census following its commencement, effectively deferring it till constituencies are redrawn through delimitation post-census.
A report released by ADR on Thursday showed that women continue to remain significantly underrepresented in India's electoral politics and the passage of the Women's Reservation Act in 2023 did not make any difference.
Among the elections held after the bill's unanimous passage in Parliament, including the 2024 general election and subsequent assembly polls, political parties gave tickets to roughly only 10 per cent of women candidates.
The report, 'Women Candidates in Elections: An Analysis of Party Ticket Distribution Following the Women's Reservation Bill, 2023,' analysed 51,708 candidates who contested the last Lok Sabha and assembly elections since the passage of the women's reservation bill, and found that only 5,095, or 10 per cent, were women.
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