The Supreme Court on Monday sought the government’s response to a petition challenging the delay in implementing the constitutional amendment providing 33% reservation for women in Parliament and state assemblies, even as it underlined that the enforcement of a law is in the domain of the Parliament and the executive. The 2023 amendment is to come into effect after a delimitation exercise.
A bench of justices BV Nagarathna and R Mahadevan issued a notice to the government on Congress leader Jaya Thakur’s public interest litigation. It 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],” said the bench.
Thakur filed the plea in May, saying the reservation can be implemented without the delimitation by reserving one-third seats in the Parliament and state legislatures.
The court called women the country’s largest minority. “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%.”
There are 75 women lawmakers in the 543-member Lok Sabha and 42 in the Rajya Sabha, which has a strength of 250.
{{/usCountry}}There are 75 women lawmakers in the 543-member Lok Sabha and 42 in the Rajya Sabha, which has a strength of 250.
{{/usCountry}}In her petition, Thakur said the 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 to be conducted based on the relevant figures for the first census after enactment of the quota law notified in September 2023.
Senior advocate Shobha Gupta, who appeared for Thakur, said the law says that one-third of seats are to be reserved and provided by rotation. “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.”
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 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 the petition to the government. It did not fix a date for taking up the matter.
The petitioner questioned why women’s reservation is subject to scientific data from the census when the same was not done when one-third reservation was provided to women in local body polls.
Her plea cited the extension to reservations for scheduled castes and tribes in Parliament and state assemblies without the “clog” of census or delimitation. “By putting the clog, it is defeating the aims and objects of women’s representation in the democratic process,” said the petition.