• Source:JND
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The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill 2026, tabled in the Lok Sabha to tweak the original Women Reservation Bill, was defeated on Friday after failing to secure a two-thirds majority. While the bill received 298 votes in favour, 230 parliamentarians voted against it. It fell short by 54 votes, as 352 were the required votes out of the 528 members who voted to pass the bill. The NDA government, following the defeat of the bill, also withdrew the other two bills- the Delimitation Bill 2026 and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill 2026.

What Next For Government?

Several prominent politicians of the NDA, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju, slammed the opposition for not voting in the favour. The original 2023 Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam was notified in the gazette on Thursday night. If the government intends to implement the bill earliest without the delimitation exercise, it could approach the parliament with a new option.

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The centre could also propose to reserve one-third of the seats of the current strength of 543 seats, ensuring earliest implementation ahead of the 2029 Lok Sabha polls. A cabinet meeting on the issue is scheduled for Saturday in which further plans are likely to be discussed. The opposition is likely to establish that it opposed the idea of delimitation, and not the women quota law.

Centre, Opposition Exchange Barbs

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Amit Shah asserted that the country will not forget the insult to Nari Shakti (women of the country). "The Congress, TMC, DMK, and Samajwadi Party did not allow the passage of the essential Constitution Amendment Bill for the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam. I want to tell them that this insult to Nari Shakti (women power) will not stop here; it will travel far and wide," Shah asserted.

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However, the Congress alleged that the BJP tried to change the electoral map through this bill. "This was not a women's reservation bill, but an attempt to change the electoral map of India. I want to tell the Prime Minister that if the government wants to implement the bill on women's quota that was passed in 2023, the Opposition will support it 100 per cent," senior party leader Rahul Gandhi stated in his post.


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