Women’s Reservation Act: Supreme Court Seeks Centre’s Reply on Delay Linked to Delimitation Exercise

The Bench of Justice B.V. Nagarathna and Justice R. Mahadevan heard the matter, where the petitioner questioned the rationale behind tying the implementation of women’s political reservation to a process that has neither commenced nor has any fixed timeline.

Appearing for the petitioner, Senior Advocate Shobha Gupta argued, “Why make it contingent on a future exercise? No exercise has even begun. There is no rational nexus. When the exercise will commence is not mentioned anywhere, they have yet to even start the census.”

Justice Nagarathna observed that the enforcement of a law lies within the domain of the executive but noted that the Court could seek clarification on the timeline. “We can only ask them when they are proposing to have it,” she remarked.

The Bench also reflected on the possible rationale behind the government’s approach, with Justice Nagarathna observing, “Maybe they want to do it based on scientific data.”

To this, counsel responded that the existence of the reservation provision itself implied that the government already had sufficient basis to act. “Once they have made the provision that there will be one-third reservation, it has to be assumed that there was scientific data on the basis of which they have come out with this,” the counsel submitted.

The Court then issued notice to the respondents, seeking their response on the challenge.

The Women’s Reservation Bill, passed in September 2023 and formally titled the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, provides for 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies. However, the law states that the reservation will take effect only after the completion of the next delimitation exercise following the first census conducted post-enactment, an aspect that has drawn criticism for potentially delaying implementation by several years.

The case is likely to come up for further hearing after the Centre files its reply.

The Union Cabinet in September 2023 had approved the Women’s Reservation Bill which was originally introduced as the Constitution (Eighty First Amendment) Bill, 1996, in the Lok Sabha by the United Front Government with the objective to reserve 33% seats in the Lok Sabha and all State Legislative Assemblies for women.

Said Bill also states that one-third of the seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will be reserved for women from those groups. These reserved seats may be allotted to different constituencies in the state or union territory by rotation.

Additionally, the Bill clarifies that such reservation shall cease to exist 15 years after the commencement of this Amendment Act.

In August 2023, the Supreme Court had questioned the Central Government on it delay in filing a response to a PIL filed by National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) seeking a writ of mandamus to the Union of India to place the Constitution (One hundred & Eighth Amendment) Bill, 2008 or the current draft of the Women’s Reservation Bill before both the Houses of the Parliament.