NEW DELHI, June 29 -- With an aim to increase the number of Lok Sabha seats, the government is learnt to be working on a number of formulations.
It is learnt that the number of Lok Sabha seats for all states may be increased by 50 per cent to assuage the concerns of southern states, as the government seeks to operationalise a fresh draft of the Constitution Amendment Bill on women's quota law.
The draft is being readied keeping in mind the concerns of the southern states that a population-based delimitation exercise would shrink their political power and influence in the Lok Sabha.
The first Bill failed to clear the Lok Sabha test on April 17, as the government could not muster the two-thirds majority required to pass it.
Building on the earlier Bill, the fresh draft is learnt to have proposed keeping the existing inter-state seat ratios intact based on the 1971 Census. But this is one of the formulations the government is working on, and no final decision has been reached, sources said.
Lok Sabha and Assembly seats will be redrawn based on the 2011 Census figures, as the numbers of the ongoing census are yet to come out. The Bill will be tabled in Parliament only after the government is confident of the numbers, the sources said.
As of now, the ruling NDA has around 300 MPs in the Lok Sabha with three vacancies. It needs 360 votes to achieve the two-thirds mark.
Under the current law, reservation for women would not be enforceable before 2034, as the process is tied to the completion of the delimitation exercise post the 2027 Census.
To implement it from the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, changes were needed in the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, or women's reservation law.
According to the government's plan, Lok Sabha seats will be increased to a maximum of 850 from the current 543 to "operationalise" the women's quota law before the 2029 parliamentary polls following a delimitation exercise to be carried out on the basis of the last published census.
According to the Constitution Amendment Bill introduced in April, seats would also be increased in state and UT Assemblies to accommodate 33 per cent reservation for women.
The government introduced a package of three interconnected bills on April 16, 2026 in a hastily called special session, to expand the Lok Sabha from 543 to 850 seats, revise delimitation using the 2011 Census, and operationalize women's reservations.
A united opposition strongly opposed the bills, claiming that using the 2011 Census for seat redistribution would unfairly penalize southern and smaller states that had been successful in managing population growth.
Linking the Women's Reservation Act directly to the contentious delimitation process caused additional friction, and the Opposition argued this was an attempt to shift electoral boundaries rather than immediately secure quotas.
As the primary Constitution Amendment Bill failed to secure the required majority, the associated bills (the Delimitation Bill, 2026 and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026) were subsequently withdrawn by the government on the floor of the House. Delimitation and seat expansion have therefore been put on hold.
Since 1971, India's population has surged by nearly one billion, yet its political map has remained unchanged. The trio of bills which were defeated in Parliament has sharpened the delimitation debate. How and on what terms, the political map will be redrawn remains widely contested.
If seats were reallocated in proportion to states' populations, under a strict "one person, one vote" standard, faster-growing, poorer northern states would likely gain representation, while slower-growing, richer southern states would see their relative influence decline. Delimitation would also entail redrawing electoral constituencies within states.
With Agency Inputs
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.