Chopping the branch you sit on: Southern states face seat losses after LS women’s quota failure

 

Have you ever watched a man cheerfully chop off the branch he is sitting on and then celebrate the fall as a victory? In India’s politics, one does not need imagination. One only needs to switch on the news.

What we saw here was not a man, but entire political parties, whole alliances even, engaged in a curious form of self-amputation—clapping all the while. The Congress and its companions are presently in jubilant mood, convinced they have won a great battle. In truth, they may have only written a rather elegant chapter in their own misfortune.

The issue at hand was the 131st Constitutional Amendment Bill. It was not a stray piece of legislation but a companion to the 106th Amendment passed in 2023, which promised women’s reservation. That promise, however, was carefully parked in the future: after the next census, after delimitation, after bureaucratic eternity had done its slow dance.

The government, in its latest attempt, tried to remove one small but crucial condition—the dependence on the “first census after 2023.” The intention was practical, almost impatient: use existing 2011 data so that women’s reservation does not get lost in India’s favourite national sport—delay.

For let us be clear: the 2026 census has already begun. Its results will appear around 2027. After that, a delimitation commission will be formed. It will sit, deliberate, stretch, and perhaps even yawn for three to four years. Which means one simple thing: women’s reservation would almost certainly not arrive in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections.

To prevent this elegant postponement, the government brought the amendment.

Alongside it came two other related bills. One concerned the distribution and increase of parliamentary seats. Southern states, naturally anxious, feared they would lose representation because their population has not grown as rapidly as the North. The government, in response, offered assurances: across the board, a 50% increase in seats for every state and union territory. No loser, everyone supposedly a winner. A rare Indian political unicorn.

Another bill dealt with delimitation and union territories. All of it was interconnected. When the main constitutional amendment failed, the rest quietly collapsed like a house of cards withdrawn from the bottom.

Now comes the theatre of irony.

The opposition insists it is not against women’s reservation. It has repeated this for three decades, with admirable consistency and equally admirable inaction. It supports the idea, it opposes its implementation. A philosophical position, perhaps.

Its current demand is that women’s reservation be implemented in the present 543-seat Lok Sabha itself. Simultaneously, it objects to the use of 2011 census data, calling it outdated. Fair enough, it sounds reasonable in a seminar room.

But then comes the twist. The same opposition also suggests using 1971 census data for implementing representation principles. India, it must be remembered, froze seat expansion after 1971. The Emergency-era arithmetic was simple: freeze population-based seat increase, allow only boundary adjustments through delimitation.

In 2001, when the freeze was due for reconsideration, Atal Bihari Vajpayee extended it further by 25 years, till 2026, citing political and international uncertainties, including the aftermath of Pokhran and global sanctions.

Now, with the 2026 census approaching, the freeze is set to end. And with it, the old balance of parliamentary arithmetic will dissolve.

The opposition’s second argument is that the government intends to favour itself through delimitation. But here is where irony begins to sharpen its blade.

For decades, Congress and its allies now claim that women’s reservation is being blocked. They argue that the government fears electoral gains for the BJP, especially among women voters, who have increasingly leaned towards Narendra Modi in most states, barring a few exceptions like West Bengal under Mamata Banerjee and Bihar under Nitish Kumar.

Thus, the opposition fears not injustice, but advantage—to the other side.

And so the bill was blocked.

But in politics, as in physics, every action has a reaction. Since the NDA did not have a two-thirds majority, the bill failed. And with it, something else quietly slipped away: the assurances given to southern states.

Amit Shah had, in Parliament, assured that no state would lose representation and that all would gain proportionally. That assurance now stands on thin ice.

When the 2026 census data arrives in 2027 and delimitation begins, the freeze on population-based seat allocation will end. Seats will now be recalculated strictly by population.

And here lies the uncomfortable arithmetic: southern states have not experienced population growth comparable to the North.

A calculation by Jayaprakash Narayan suggests the consequences:

Andhra Pradesh: -5 seats

Telangana: -3

Tamil Nadu: -10

Karnataka: -2

Kerala: -7

Odisha: -4

West Bengal: -4

These are, not coincidentally, the very states most vocally opposed to the bill.

Meanwhile, gains would shift northward:

Uttar Pradesh: +12

Bihar: +10

Madhya Pradesh: +5

Rajasthan: +7

Thus the grand accusation—that the Centre was tilting India northwards—has, ironically, been operationalised not by the Centre, but by its opponents.

One is reminded of those enthusiastic duelists who aim at the opponent’s hat and end up shooting their own foot.

The narrative loss is perhaps the greatest.

The opposition has successfully framed itself as blocking women’s empowerment. Whether true or not is irrelevant in politics; perception is currency.

The second narrative collapse is even more paradoxical. The government had promised seat expansion. That expansion would have balanced regional concerns. Now, instead, reductions loom for several states. And the blame, fairly or not, rests on those who blocked the bill.

In this reshuffling, BJP appears as both proposer and moral claimant: attempting reform, allegedly blocked by opponents.

The opposition, meanwhile, finds itself defending a position that is neither consistent nor persuasive.

Even if one accepts their argument—that BJP seeks electoral advantage—the counterargument now is weak. For the BJP, despite limited presence in the South (Tamil Nadu virtually none, Kerala negligible, Telangana modest, Karnataka significant but not dominant), continues to rule at the Centre on the strength of North and West India.

And had seat increases occurred, multiple parties—not just BJP—would have benefited.

In attempting to deny BJP an advantage, the opposition may have denied itself coherence.

The most tragic irony, however, lies in timing.

The 2023 women’s reservation law still exists. It has not died. It has merely been delayed. But delay in India is not neutral; it is destiny postponed indefinitely.

Implementation may now slip beyond 2029, perhaps into 2034 or beyond.

Thus, what the opposition has achieved is not prevention, but postponement with collateral damage.

And that damage will become clearer when delimitation begins and southern leaders—particularly Tamil Nadu’s M.K. Stalin and his allies—face the arithmetic consequences of their political stance.

One may oppose an opponent. One may even succeed in blocking a bill. But when the dust settles, one must still live in the structure one has helped shape.

And so we arrive at the uncomfortable conclusion: in trying to wound their adversary, the opposition may have inflicted deeper wounds upon themselves and their allies.

In Indian politics, victory often arrives dressed as defeat, and defeat frequently masquerades as triumph, until the numbers finally speak, and they speak rather loudly.