New Delhi, June 23 -- With Trinamool Congress legislators jumping ship, attention has returned to bills that the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has been unable to pass at the centre-including the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill meant to let India's delimitation exercise use the Census of 2011 instead of 2027. The ostensible purpose of the amendment was to let the Women's Reservation Act take effect before the next general election.

But it has been vociferously opposed by the southern states, which argue that delimitation would reduce their proportion of parliamentary seats and hurt them for successful population control measures. On the other hand, the ruling party argues that their absolute number of seats would go up, gi...