New Delhi, Apr 1 (PTI) The Budget session of Parliament is unlikely to be adjourned sine die on Thursday as the government is planning to summon it again for two-three days in the third week of April to bring a bill to increase the number of Lok Sabha seats to 816 so that 273 of them could be reserved for women, sources privy to the development said.
The budget session, which started on January 28, was supposed to end on April 2 but the government is contemplating to extend it for two-three more days, albeit with a gap.
As per the thinking of the government, on Thursday, chair of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are likely to adjourn the respective houses and make the announcement that it would meet on a specific date.
“The House will not be adjourned sine die but will be adjourned with the announcement that it will meet again on a specific date. We will meet again very soon, in this month itself,” a source said, indicating third week of April is the possible period of the two-three day sittings.
However, there is no official word on the government’s plans.
During the extended period, the government is expected to table the Constitution amendment bill that will tweak the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, commonly known as women’s reservation law, in Parliament.
Last fortnight, Union Home Minister Amit Shah discussed the plan with some NDA constituents and some non-Congress opposition floor leaders. But consultations with the principal opposition party Congress and another major party TMC were yet to take place.
The provision to provide 33 per cent reservation to women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies was brought by amending the Constitution in 2023, but it will come into effect after the completion of the delimitation exercise.
According to the broad contours available, the number of Lok Sabha seats would be increased from the present 543 to 816, with 273 seats reserved for women. The reservation will also be done in a “vertical basis” with seats allocated for SCs and STs. The redrawing of the constituencies will be done on the basis of 2011 census rather than proposed 2027 census.
A similar exercise will be carried out for state assemblies where seats will be reserved on a pro-rata basis.
While a Constitution amendment bill will tweak the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, commonly known as women’s reservation law, another ordinary bill will amend the Delimitation Act.
Once approved by Parliament, the proposed laws will come into force on March 31, 2029 and will help reserve seats for women in the next Lok Sabha elections and assembly elections in Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Andhra Pradesh.
The sources also underlined that a delimitation or boundary commission is a “neutral” body mandated to redraw Lok Sabha and assembly constituencies, and its decisions cannot be challenged even in the Supreme Court.
They said a neutral body will instil faith in the delimitation exercise.
The Election Commission is another independent institution, but it cannot be mandated to carry out a pan-India delimitation exercise.
“At best, it can carry out delimitation of one or a few states, as it carried out delimitation in Assam recently,” a government functionary pointed out.
Besides the delimitation exercise, which can decide the constituencies that can be reserved for women, as it does for the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes (by way of population in their cases), another way to decide on constituencies can be by rotation.
In September 2023, President Droupadi Murmu gave her assent to the Nari Shakti Vandan Bill.
The law is officially known as the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act. PTI ACB ZMN
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