New Delhi: It was in September 2023 that the 33% women’s quota in Parliament and state Assemblies became law after the President Droupadi Murmu gave her assent to the Constitution (106th Amendment) Bill.
The bill, also known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, will however be implemented after the next Census and a subsequent delimitation exercise.
On Monday, the Supreme Court sought the Central government’s response to a PIL by Congress leader Jaya Thakur challenging the delay in implementing the women’s reservation constitutional amendment.
A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and R Mahadevan said the court cannot direct the executive or Parliament to enforce a law, but can ask when the government proposes to have the delimitation exercise.
“Enforcement of a law is in the domain of the Parliament and the executive. We cannot issue a mandamus (direction) in that regard. But we can ask them to tell this court when they propose to have it (delimitation),” the bench said.
Thakur had filed the petition in May, arguing that the reservation can be implemented without the delimitation by reserving one-third seats in the Parliament and state legislatures.
“Almost 48.4 percent of the total population is women. Even without the reservation, why can’t women be granted tickets? Women’s representation in Parliament is coming down. Forget 33%, it is less than 10%,” the top court observed.
Currently the 543-member Lok Sabha has 75 women lawmakers, which is 13.8%. In Rajya Sabha, there are 42 female members out of 250, making it 16.8% representation of women.
Thakur made the point that fair opportunity to women in the 2023 legislation was defeated by postponing its implementation for an uncertain period by a “clog” of the delimitation exercise.
“Why delay something that has already taken so long? The first women’s reservation bill was brought in Parliament in 1987. There is no connection between giving the reservation and undertaking a delimitation exercise,” argued senior advocate Shobha Gupta, who appeared for Thakur.
The bench called the constitution amendment for the quota an instance of political justice for women. “Maybe they want to know which are the constituencies to be reserved and how it is to happen. They also want to increase the number of seats in the Parliament, and so they want to have scientific data. Remember, there was a special session of Parliament to pass this law.”
The apex court agreed to examine the issue after Gupta argued that there was no indication of the timeline for the delimitation exercise two years after the law’s passage.
“This is a conditional amendment. It will only come into effect after delimitation is undertaken. But when does delimitation happen? And suppose they do not commence this exercise.”
The court allowed the petitioner to serve a copy of her PIL to the government, but did not fix a date for the next hearing.