Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill defeated in Lok Sabha; women's reservation and delimitation package shelved

On 17 April 2026, the Lok Sabha defeated the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026. The Bill needed a special two-thirds majority of members present and voting to pass. With the House strength at 528 at the time of voting, 298 members voted in favour and 230 against — below the 352-vote threshold required. Speaker Om Birla announced that the Bill had failed to secure the constitutional majority and adjourned the proceedings.

The 131st Amendment Bill was the cornerstone of a three-bill package. It sought to redistribute Lok Sabha seats based on the latest Census (currently the 2011 Census) so that the 33 per cent Women's Reservation Act could be implemented quickly. Two companion bills — the Delimitation Bill, 2026 and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026 — were tied to the constitutional amendment. After the lead Bill failed, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju announced that the government was withdrawing the two related legislations as they could not be considered in isolation.

The defeat was the result of unified opposition floor action. The Congress, the Trinamool Congress, the DMK, the Samajwadi Party and the Left coordinated their votes against the Bill. Their objection was not to women's reservation, on which there is all-party consensus, but to the linkage with delimitation based on the 2011 Census. Southern, eastern and north-eastern states feared that proportional redistribution would shrink their seat share because of their lower population growth compared with the Hindi heartland. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin had been campaigning for an all-party stand on this since March. Home Minister Amit Shah's verbal assurance that southern states would retain their proportional share — and an offer to redraft the Bill to a flat 50 per cent uniform increase — did not satisfy the opposition because the text of the Bill itself mandated 2011-Census-based delimitation.

The fall-out is significant. The 84th Constitutional Amendment had frozen the number of Lok Sabha seats based on the 1971 Census until the first Census after 2026. With the 2026-27 Census still under way, the constitutional path now is for the government to wait for the new Census, and refer the linked questions of Lok Sabha expansion and women's reservation rollout to a parliamentary committee for cross-party consensus. The episode is a textbook reminder of why the framers built the two-thirds threshold into Article 368 — to stop far-reaching structural changes from being pushed through without broad agreement.

Exam angle: Aspirants must remember the numerical specifics — 528 members present, 298 in favour, 230 against, 352 needed for two-thirds — along with the constitutional logic (Article 368 amendment threshold) and the linkage between delimitation, the 84th and 87th Amendments and the 1971 / 2011 Census freeze. Expect a polity question on the two-thirds-of-members-present-and-voting requirement, and a current affairs question on the name of the Bill (131st Amendment, 2026).