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New Delhi: The Union government has on Tuesday (April 14) circulated three Bills to MPs – less than 48 hours before they are to be presented in the special session of parliament on Thursday – that seek to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha.

While the government’s stated objective for bringing the three Bills is to “operationalise” women’s reservation, a reading of the proposed legislations show that they are in effect being used to bring in large-scale changes that go beyond political representation for women.

If passed, this will significantly alter parliamentary arithmetics, representation based on population and Union-state relations.

The net beneficiary, of political power passing asymmetrically to the north, by this hurried exercise, minus any consultation, are political parties that have consistently won the north and west – in short, the BJP and its allies.

The 2023 Women’s Reservation Act provided for 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state legislatures, but it was tied to delimitation and census. Read together, the three Bills provide for removing the freeze on the 1971 delimitation and make way for a fresh delimitation exercise, based on the “latest published census”, in effect implying the 2011 census.

This is bound to disadvantage southern states that have since then instated more effective population control measures in comparison to those in the north. As a state’s population significantly influences the allocation of Union government funds, this will also directly impact its financial health – a concern that has already been a point of contention between southern states and the Union government.

The proposed Bills raise fundamental questions flowing from how they are structured and their timing.

What the Bills propose

The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026 seeks to increase seats in the Lok Sabha from 543 to 850 by amending Article 81. It also seeks to amend Article 82 by omitting its clause 3, which provides that the next delimitation would follow the 2027 census.

The Bill further amends the marginal heading of Article 82 from “Readjustment........

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