Overview
- In Thursday’s special session, the government defended a plan to expand the Lok Sabha and redraw seats using census data while reserving one-third of seats for women.
- Before any vote, it issued a notification applying the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act to pre-empt procedural hurdles.
- Home Minister Amit Shah told the House that southern states would not lose influence and said their seats would rise from 129 to 195, with Tamil Nadu moving from 39 to 59.
- Opposition leaders including Priyanka Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav and Asaduddin Owaisi backed women’s quotas but demanded a separate vote on delimitation, warning of altered state balance and OBC representation.
- Independent estimates based on the 2011 census project a larger share of seats for Hindi-speaking states and a smaller share for the South, a change analysts say could reshape who sets the national agenda.