Breaking: Women quota likely to be implemented in assembly polls from mid-2026

New Delhi: The Women’s Reservation Bill on Thursday became the law after President Droupadi Murmu gave her assent to the historic bill passed by both houses of the Parliament during the recently held special session. 

The law, now officially known as the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, provides 33 per cent reservation to women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.

Even as the opposition parties led by Congress voted in favour of the bill and tried to claim the credit, they attacked the bill, now law, as yet another election ‘jumla’ by BJP.

Besides demanding an OBC sub-quota within women’s quota, the opposition peddled the narrative that the women's quota will be implemented after five years, i.e. the 2029 Lok Sabha polls.

Addressing a rally in Madhya Pradesh on Saturday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi even went further and said that it would take 10 years to implement citing census and delimitation as the reason.

Census and delimitation are pre-requisite conditions laid out in the Constitution for implementing the women’s quota.

Although Home Minister Amit Shah and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman hinted about the early implementation of women’s quota in the Parliament, NewsDrum is exclusively bringing the Modi government’s gameplan with the timeline set for the implementation.

NewsDrum was the first media platform to break that the Modi government called the special session of Parliament to introduce the Women's Reservation Bill.

The story was followed by the Times of India two days later.

Inside Modi govt’s gameplan for “women quota” implementation

NewsDrum has learned from sources that the Modi government is planning to speed up the census and delimitation and finish them by 2026 in a time-bound manner.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants the women’s quota to be implemented in the 2026 assembly elections and has instructed officials to speed up the process including census and delimitation,” said a source.

Multiple sources confirmed with NewsDrum that the government will start the census in January 2024. 

“In any census, there is preparatory work before the actual enumeration process in the first few months which will kick-off in early next year. Soon after general elections, the census will begin in full swing,” said one of the sources.

“The ground survey takes about a year. This means the data collection will be over by March-April 2025. Then the coalition of data will also take about a year. In the meantime, setting up of delimitation commission would begin so that the 2026 deadline could be met,” added a source.

Another senior government official said that the idea is to implement women’s quota in the assembly elections taking place in mid-2026.

As per the Constitution, the delimitation will be based on census after 2026. 

“An amendment is likely to move to say 2021 census would begin in 2024 and 2024-25 census will be taken as the base for delimitation exercise,” said one of the sources quoted above.

On the party level, the BJP is also planning to stump the opposition by fielding about 30% women candidates in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, claimed a source.