At the heart of the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill is the decennial Census exercise that has been indefinitely delayed since 2021.
The 128th Constitutional Amendment Bill, 2023, or the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, will be implemented after the 2026 delimitation taking into account the latest census. Delimitation means the act or process of fixing limits or boundaries of territorial constituencies in a country to represent changes in population.
The last Census was held in 2011. The Centre initially attributed the COVID-19 pandemic for postponing the exercise, the last two notifications by the Registrar General of India (RGI) have not specified any reason for the delay.
