Gajendra Singh
On 17 April 2026, the constitutional amendment bill related to giving reservation to women could not be passed by Parliament. Under the Nari Shakti Vandan Act (128th Constitutional Amendment Bill, 2023), a provision was made to reserve 33% of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. There are many reasons cited behind this, such as the need for delimitation, distribution of seats between North and South India on the basis of population, and the demand for a “quota within quota”. But amidst all these arguments, a basic question gets lost somewhere. Even after 80 years of independence, a woman is not just a “woman”; sometimes she is seen as a Scheduled Caste, sometimes a Tribe, sometimes a Backward Class, and, according to the thinking on social media, she is either less than the general class or more of an elite or light-skinned woman. But the real question is: are we looking for solutions or creating a new layer of excuses? The question is also whether we are looking at women as political citizens or just dividing them on the basis of identity. If every representation is divided into new categories, will democracy not become more complex?
If we look at the current situation, out of 543 MPs of the 18th Lok Sabha, only 74 (about 14%) are women, which clearly shows that women’s representation in the country is limited. These women MPs come from 22 states and union territories, while not even a single woman MP being elected from a large state like Kerala further highlights this imbalance. From a party point of view, BJP has the highest number of 31 women MPs, followed by Congress with 13 and Trinamool Congress with 11, which shows that women’s participation in all the major parties is still limited. Among national parties, BJP gave tickets to the maximum number of women candidates at about 16%. After this, Congress and CPI-M fielded about 13% women candidates each, while BSP gave tickets to about 8% women. While the Aam Aadmi Party did not field any woman out of its 22 candidates, the NPP fielded 2 women out of its total 3 candidates, which reflects the different priorities regarding women’s representation among the parties.
Of the 43,348 analysed candidates for state and union territory assemblies, only 4,295 (about 10%) were women, indicating limited participation of women in the electoral process. If seen state-wise, the percentage of women candidates was highest in Odisha (14%), Delhi (14%) and Chhattisgarh (13%), while it was lowest in Nagaland (2%), Arunachal Pradesh (5%) and Jammu and Kashmir (5%). At the same time, out of a total of 4,123 MLAs in assemblies across the country, only 390 (about 9%) are women. At the party level, BJP has the highest number of women MLAs at 163, followed by Congress at 59 and Trinamool Congress at 34, which makes it clear that the problem is widespread and structural.
In contrast, India’s neighbouring countries such as Pakistan (1956), Bangladesh (1972) and Nepal had already implemented women’s reservation provisions decades earlier, while at the global level Argentina increased women’s representation by implementing a 30% quota in 1991. Globally, women’s participation is expected to be around 27.5% by the year 2026, i.e., only one in every four MPs is a woman. Some countries have made notable achievements—Rwanda has about 64% women, Cuba 57%, Nicaragua 55%, and Mexico nearly 50% women in parliament. Among developed countries, Sweden (45%), Finland (45.5%) and New Zealand (45.5%) also show high levels of representation. Regionally, the Americas have female participation at about 35.6%, while in the Middle East and North Africa it is only about 16%. In India, the representation of women in the Lok Sabha is about 14%, which is much lower than the global average. These figures make it clear that in countries where policies like reservation or quotas are implemented, women’s participation is higher, whereas in other countries achieving equality still remains a big challenge.
Interestingly, India presented a successful model by implementing 33% (50% in many states) reservation at the Panchayat level in 1992, but at the grassroots level, tendencies like “Sarpanch Pati”, “Pradhan Pati” and “Pramukh Pati” are still seen, where instead of the elected women representatives, their family members take the actual decisions. In such a situation, the question arises: after about 30–35 years of experience, did governments seriously review this system? Women’s reservation gave millions of women the opportunity to enter politics and their leadership abilities also developed, but along with it, the problem of “proxy leadership” also emerged, where actual decisions are taken by family members instead of the elected women representatives. Efforts to overcome this challenge were neither uniform across the country nor effective enough.
As far as Congress is concerned, it took the initiative on women’s reservation while being in power for a long time, but could not take decisive steps to implement it. For example, the Women’s Reservation Bill was introduced for the first time in 1996, after which attempts were made to introduce it in 1998, 1999 and 2008 as well. The Rajya Sabha also passed it in 2010, but it remained pending in the Lok Sabha and could not become law. This happened at a time when the Congress-led government was in power at the Centre. Moreover, when the Deve Gowda government introduced this bill in 1996, it became an issue of heated debate. Many male MPs raised the question of whether reservation would bring in “capable women”. Some MPs opposed it, citing the absence of a quota for OBC and minority women in the bill. During the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, when the then Law Minister M. Thambidurai tried to introduce the bill on 13 July 1998, there was strong opposition from RJD and SP MPs. Surendra Prasad Yadav, an MP, snatched the copy of the bill from Speaker GMC Balayogi and tore it.
The concept of a “quota within quota”, i.e., a separate sub-quota for classes like Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes within women’s reservation, may seem justified in practice, but it also proves to be complex and a hindrance in implementation. Additionally, women’s reservation has repeatedly been embroiled in the “quota within quota” debate—from the 1990s to the present day, many regional parties and leaders have demanded separate reservations for backward class women, making consensus on the bill increasingly difficult. As a result, a bill that could have passed with broad consensus languished for decades.
Furthermore, global experience also shows that most countries have adopted direct and explicit gender quotas to increase female representation, rather than creating multi-layered class divisions within them. On the contrary, in India, the “quota within quota” debate has many times served to postpone the original women’s reservation, thereby weakening the objective of the policy. This also indicates that this issue has become not only a matter of social justice but also a part of political strategy, where, by increasing complexity, decisions are stalled instead of moving forward. In such a situation, the question arises whether “quota within quota” is really the solution, or whether it is becoming an indirect means of avoiding women’s representation.
