Union Home Minister Amit Shah told the Opposition in the Lok Sabha on Friday that the government was willing to put its assurances on delimitation into a formal amendment, sharpening a tense debate over women’s reservation, parliamentary expansion and the political balance between states.Shah said he was ready to return to the House within an hour with an official amendment guaranteeing about a 50 per cent increase in seats for states if the Opposition agreed to let the measure move forward. He said the government had “nothing to hide” and was prepared to circulate the proposal in writing, seeking to answer charges that the Centre was using delimitation to alter the federal balance to its advantage.
The exchange came during debate on a wider package that links the implementation of one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies to a fresh delimitation exercise. The government has argued that the redrawing of constituencies is necessary to make representation more even and to ensure the women’s quota can be rolled out before the 2029 general election. Opposition parties have backed women’s representation in principle but objected to tying it to a politically fraught overhaul of seat distribution.
Shah used the floor intervention to counter a central concern raised by southern parties and several Opposition members: that states which succeeded in slowing population growth could see their relative influence weakened in a larger House. He said that under the government’s model the present Lok Sabha strength of 543 would rise to 816, and that all southern states would gain seats rather than lose them. He cited figures showing the combined tally of five southern states rising from 129 seats to 195, with their share of the House remaining close to 24 per cent.
Tamil Nadu has been at the centre of the argument, with political leaders there warning that a population-linked redistribution could reward faster-growing northern states and penalise those that invested earlier in social development and family planning. Shah sought to answer that directly, saying Tamil Nadu’s current 39 seats would rise to about 59 under the proposed expansion, while the state’s share of the chamber would broadly hold.
He also said Karnataka’s strength would move from 28 to 42, Andhra Pradesh from 25 to 38, Telangana from 17 to 26 and Kerala from 20 to 30. The government’s message was that the proposed increase would preserve broad proportional balance while enlarging the House enough to accommodate women’s reservation, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe representation, and future population shifts.
That assurance did not settle the dispute. Opposition leaders argued that the issue was not only the absolute number of seats but the deeper constitutional and political implications of linking women’s reservation to delimitation. Some maintained that the 2023 law on women’s reservation had already established the principle and that the government was now trying to reshape electoral geography under the cover of a widely supported reform. Rahul Gandhi described the move as an unconstitutional device, while other Opposition speakers said the Centre should implement women’s reservation without making it dependent on a contentious restructuring exercise.
Akhilesh Yadav dismissed Shah’s offer of a written amendment, saying the government had lost credibility with its critics over the past decade. His remark underlined how little trust remained in a debate that has merged questions of gender representation, federal equity and electoral strategy into one of the most combustible issues of the session.
The legislative outcome added weight to that tension. The Constitution amendment bill tied to the plan failed to secure the required two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha on Friday, with 298 members voting in favour and 230 against. That defeat was unusual for the government and exposed the limits of its numbers on a constitutional change that needed broader consensus than ordinary legislation.