Rajya Sabha LoP Mallikarjun Kharge emphasised that he had already informed the government of the Congress’s view that an all‑party meeting chaired by the Prime Minister should be convened at the earliest to discuss such a roadmap.
| Photo Credit: ANI
After informal feelers failed to bring the Congress and other Opposition parties to the table to discuss accelerating the implementation of the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, popularly known as the Women’s Reservation Act, 2023, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju wrote to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Monday (March 16, 2026) reiterating the request. The Congress, in response, once again conveyed that the issue should be discussed in an all‑party meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Writing to Mr. Kharge, Mr. Rijiju underlined the significance of the implementation framework and the requirement of a broad national consensus for the effective operationalisation of the law.
The government, according to sources, wants to omit two key steps in the implementation of the Act — completion of the census report, which is expected only by mid‑2027 after the census is completed by March 2027, and delimitation, which will redraw the boundaries of the Assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies. Because of these two steps, the timeline for reserving 33% of seats in elected legislative bodies remained ambiguous. The indefinite timeline for implementation was one of the Opposition’s main criticisms when the government brought the law to Parliament in September 2023.
Unmoved by the written request, Mr. Kharge reiterated the party’s stance. Responding to Mr. Rijiju’s letter, he wondered why, 30 months after Parliament unanimously passed the Bill, the government was reaching out to “deliberate upon the modalities and roadmap for implementation of this landmark constitutional amendment.”
Mr. Kharge emphasised that he had already informed the government of the Congress’s view that an all‑party meeting chaired by the Prime Minister should be convened at the earliest to discuss such a roadmap. “It would be in keeping with the best traditions of parliamentary democracy,” Mr. Kharge wrote.
Meanwhile, speculation continues that the government could bring in a Bill to amend the law in the ongoing session of Parliament. According to sources, the government could opt for rotation of reserved seats for women — one of the key recommendations of the Geeta Mukherjee Committee, which reviewed the legislation when it was first introduced in Parliament. The panel had suggested rotating reserved seats for women in successive elections to ensure equitable representation across constituencies over time. Under this recommendation, the reserved seats would be rotated after each general election. This cycle was designed so that after three general elections, all constituencies in the Lok Sabha and the Assemblies would have been reserved at least once for women.
Parliament will have to amend Section 5 of the Act, which states that reservation for women will come into effect “after an exercise of delimitation is undertaken for this purpose after the relevant figures for the first Census taken after commencement of the Act…”. Since this is a constitutional amendment, Article 368(2) requires that it be passed in each House “by a majority of the total membership of that House and by a majority of not less than two‑thirds of the members of that House present and voting.”
The BJP has 240 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 103 members in the Rajya Sabha. In neither House does the party command, on its own, the strength required to pass the legislation.
Published – March 17, 2026 04:34 pm IST
