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TMC, DMK, SP score on percentage of women Lok Sabha MPs: What about Cong, BJP, and parties PM named in his speech
These are 5 parties PM mentioned by name in his ‘address to nation’. Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee underlined TMC's gender ratio as she denied “anti-women” charge
Of the women elected to the 18th Lok Sabha in the 2024 general election — 74, about 14% of 543 — eleven came from the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the ruling party of West Bengal. That means 38% of the TMC’s total 29 MPs are women, the highest among all parties, and more pointedly among those mentioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his “address to the nation” on April 18.
Tamil Nadu’s ruling party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) — another of the parties mentioned from an election-bound state — and the Samajwadi Party (SP) of Uttar Pradesh stands next to each other, at around 13.5%.
The Congress is just above 13% on this count as per the 2024 main results. Its number would go up if you were to count subsequent bypolls, including the victory of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from Wayanad in November 2024 that took the total women in the Lok Sabha to 75.
The data becomes important at a time when there has been much debate on how and when to implement the 2023 law granting 33% women’s quota in the Lok Sabha and assemblies.
As per the 2024 LS results, PM Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has 31 women Lok Sabha MPs. That is the highest in terms of absolute numbers. But when seen as part of its total 240 MPs, women are a bit below 13% of the BJP's Lok Sabha tally.
The parties PM named in ‘address to nation’
The TMC, DMK, SP and Congress, plus his own BJP, are the five parties that Prime Minister Modi named expressly in his “address to the nation” on April 18, after he accused the Opposition of being anti-women as the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, was defeated in the Lok Sabha.
TMC-ruled Bengal, currently led by a woman CM, and DMK-ruled Tamil Nadu are both in the middle of assembly elections right now, while BJP-ruled UP is set for polls early next year.
The amendment bill, which fell, had sought to trigger an immediate increase and change of Lok Sabha seats, as Opposition parties insisted that they are already fine with women’s quota — okayed unanimously in 2023 — but do not want a Lok Sabha rejig yet, a process called delimitation. Before such delimitation, they want questions around regional distribution and caste quotas addressed too.
PM Modi called them anti-women, and said they were only hiding behind “excuses”.
“I was deeply saddened to see, when this proposal for women's welfare was defeated, dynastic parties like the Congress, DMK, TMC, and Samajwadi Party were clapping with joy," he said.
He repeated this charge at BJP's rallies against the TMC in Bengal on Sunday.
‘Modi has eye on elections'
Opposition parties say the whole plan was anyway for PM Modi to label them anti-women with an eye on the elections.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said PM Modi mentioned his party 59 times in his April 18 address alone. He was referring to the official English text of the speech, in which the TMC was mentioned at least eight times; the SP 11 times; and the DMK made seven appearances.
The Opposition parties’ position on women's representation — repeated in Parliament and outside — is that their objection is to the delimitation, not the quota that's already passed three years ago but not yet implemented as it's been linked to census and delimitation as pre-conditions.
West Bengal CM and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee alleged the BJP-led NDA government planned to use the women's quota tweak as a "front" for the delimitation that would "break the country into pieces”.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra of the Congress said, “Women are not idiots. They can see through these actions.”
She said the government could just bring back the 2023 law. “Hold Parliament on Monday, bring the bill and let's see who is anti-woman. We will all vote and support you,” she said, asking for the delimitation to be removed as a caveat altogether.
The government has argued that an increase in seats is necessary so that current leaders do not lose out while more women get chances too. It promised — though not as part of the bill text — that there would be a 50% flat increase, thus no change in states’ proportionate shares.
The Opposition argues that delimitation should be done after the current ongoing census, expected to be finished next year, is done. Because, caste data will also be available with it, particularly of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), for a fairer distribution. This is the first census in nearly a century to count all castes, beyond Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCs, STs) that already have political quota; OBCs do not.
Why not in House of 543?
On Saturday, the DMK presented an alternative bill, for reservation within the current House of 543 for now. But Parliament was adjourned and this was not taken up.
TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee “dared” the BJP to carry out a 50% reservation even, “And reserve the PM’s post too for women, by rotation. Do it. Bring it right now.”
One of the opposition's demands even in 2023, when the original law passed — and again during the special session for the delimitation attempt now — was to implement reservation within the existing 543 seats without a fresh delimitation exercise.
Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi said the bill was “an attempt to seize power through delimitation and gerrymandering”. Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi called the delimitation plan "an assault on the Constitution itself”.
TMC MP Mahua Moitra, however, pointed to her party's record in the ongoing West Bengal assembly elections, posting on X: “Number of women candidates in Bengal elections — TMC: 55, BJP: 32. TMC has almost double (the) number of women candidates than BJP. (Narendra Modi) Stop the hypocrisy!”
As for women representation, trend data for the Lok Sabha over time offers wider context. Women's representation has grown from 8.3% in the 14th Lok Sabha (formed with the 2004 elections) to a peak of 14.4% in the 17th Lok Sabha (2019), before slipping to 13.8% in 2024, the 18th Lok Sabha.
(In the 2024 elections, 74 women won; the number went up to 75 later, as Rahul Gandhi vacated the Wayanad seat to retain Rae Bareli in UP, and his sister, Priyanka, made her electoral debut by winning that seat in Kerala.)
Percentage-wise, women's representation in the Lok Sabha remains considerably short of the 33% required once the Women's Reservation Act is enforced. For now, the 2023 Act remains in force but dormant, with its activation contingent on a delimitation exercise that the Opposition insists cannot be rushed.
The PM’s 8:30pm speech on April 18 did not expressly address that, though he accused the Opposition of using “technical bahane”, alibis, in his argument in Parliament.
