New Delhi, April 17 -- The Centre's proposal to fast-track India's implementation of the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (Women's Reservation Act) by speeding up nationwide delimitation has opened a Pandora's box.

That Act of 2023 amended the Constitution to reserve 33% of seats in Parliament and state assemblies for women. It was to be done after delimitation, a process by which electoral constituencies would be redrawn based on population.

Now the Centre has made two big legislative moves-one to enlarge the Lok Sabha's numeric strength and another to set up a commission that would carve up India's electoral map afresh and could use population data from an earlier census than envisaged. As expected, this has stoked latent but ever-present...