Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam —
“Nari Shakti” Ya “Neta Shakti”? — The Greatest Political Heist Dressed as Women’s Empowerment
An Opposition Party’s Sarcastic Salute to the BJP’s Master Stroke
The Bill That Took 27 Years to “Care” About Women
Let us begin with a standing ovation.
Truly. A slow, deliberate, sarcastic clap — the kind reserved for a magician who pulls a rabbit out of a hat and expects us to forget that they hid the rabbit there themselves.
The Women’s Reservation Bill was first introduced in Parliament all the way back in 1996, by the H.D. Deve Gowda government.
It lapsed. It was reintroduced. It lapsed again. The bill lapsed not once but five times between 1998 and 2003 alone.
In total, six previous attempts at a Women’s Reservation Bill were unsuccessfully waged between 1996 and 2008.
And then — on a perfectly timed morning, in a brand-new Parliament building, with cameras rolling and saffron flags flying — the BJP discovered, after 27 years, that women exist and deserve representation.
Remarkable. Truly remarkable.
A Party That Suddenly Loves Women (Electorally Speaking)
•India’s political representation among women currently ranks 141st out of 185 countries globally, with women holding just 15.2% of seats in the Lok Sabha as of 2023.
One-hundred-and-forty-first. Not first. Not fifteenth. One hundred and forty-first.
And the BJP — the party that has governed India for over a decade with an iron majority, the party that can pass anything it wants on any given Tuesday — spent those years doing…
what exactly for women’s representation? Building statues. Naming schemes. Organizing rallies. But passing the bill? Oh, that needs Census data. That needs delimitation. That needs alignment of the stars and approval from Jupiter.
President Droupadi Murmu signed the bill on 28 September 2023, but the gazette notification made it clear that the reservation would come into force only after the first delimitation — frozen until 2026.
So they passed a bill. They didn’t implement it. They gifted women a post-dated cheque and expected them to frame it on their walls.
The Delimitation Trojan Horse — The Real Gift Inside the Box
Now here is where the sarcasm must pause, because this part is genuinely important and genuinely dangerous.
While there appears to be broad bipartisan support for putting more women into parliament, opposition parties raised serious concerns over changing voting boundaries, warning that it could tilt the political balance in favour of the BJP.
The BJP draws much of its support from the densely populated north, and critics argue that expanding seats in parliament based on population would therefore benefit it the most. Leaders in southern states, where birth rates have declined more sharply, said a population-based delimitation exercise could increase seats in the north and disadvantage southern regions that have slowed population growth and built stronger economies.
In plain language: The South did its homework. Educated its girls. Controlled its population. And the reward for that responsible governance? Fewer seats in Parliament.
Congress parliamentarian Gaurav Gogoi alleged that the intention was not to implement women’s reservation but to introduce delimitation “through the backdoor.”
They wrapped a political land-grab in a pink ribbon and called it feminism. Brilliant, honestly. We tip our hat.
Opposition’s “Victory” — Or: How We Were Forced to Applaud Our Own Funeral
Now, the truly exquisite irony: the opposition supported the bill.
Of course they did. How could they not? Rahul Gandhi stated that while Congress supports increasing women in parliament, the government’s approach is aimed at consolidating power, calling it “merely an attempt to seize power through delimitation and gerrymandering.”
So the opposition found itself in a perfect trap: oppose the bill and be branded anti-women; support it and hand BJP a triumph. The BJP constructed a guillotine and asked the opposition to pull the rope themselves.
• Congress spokesperson Shama Mohamed claimed the bill’s passage as a victory for her party, asserting it was Congress that gave India its first woman Prime Minister, first woman President, and first woman Speaker in Parliament.
Yes, that is correct. And it is also the political equivalent of a parent reminding their child at the dinner table, “I changed your diapers once, so this meal is technically my achievement.”
The bill passed. The opposition voted for it. And the BJP promptly declared this a Modi masterstroke. Even victory in Parliament was stolen.
What the Opposition Actually Wanted — And Was Denied
• Swami Prasad Maurya from the Samajwadi Party termed the bill “flawed” because it contained no reservation for OBC women.
Kapil Sibal sought assurance from the government on implementation by 2029. Vandana Chauhan from the NCP raised concern over delayed implementation and demanded it be made effective by the 2024 General Elections.
CPI(M) MP Elamaram Kareem directly called it an “election gimmick” of the BJP.
The opposition’s demand was simple: implement it now, include OBC women, and don’t link it to a delimitation exercise that conveniently hands you the country’s electoral map redrawn in your favour. These were reasonable demands. They were ignored.
The Sarcastic Salute
So here we stand, opposition leaders of this great nation, saffron-trapped and checkmate-d, giving our most theatrical bow:
Thank you, BJP, for discovering women in 2023.
Thank you for a bill that empowers women — sometime after the next census, after the next delimitation, after the next election cycle, after the sun rises from the west.
Thank you for the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, which venerates women so deeply that actual women OBC legislators were excluded from its scope.
• MK Stalin, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, burned a copy of the delimitation bill and raised a black flag, urging people across the state to resist, calling it an attempt to marginalise southern states through redrawn boundaries.
Some members of Parliament wore black in protest.
Not against women’s reservation — everyone wants that — but against the political architecture hidden inside it.
The Real Victory: Forcing the Issue Into the Open
Here is what opposition parties can genuinely claim: we made this issue impossible to ignore. For 27 years, parties of every colour buried this bill. The opposition’s sustained pressure — in Parliament, on the streets, in manifestos — made it politically toxic not to pass it.
Political leaders and experts say that at the heart of the decades-long delay was the unwillingness to share power and fear of losing bastions of electoral support.
That culture of fear is what the opposition fought. And while the BJP may have turned the bill into a political instrument, the idea of women’s reservation — 33% seats, constitutionally guaranteed — is now law. That cannot be undone.
The opposition did not win the battle of framing. But it won the longer battle of principle.
Final Word: To the Women of India
Beyond the sarcasm, beyond the politics, beyond the delimitation arithmetic — there are 48 crore women voters in this country who were told for 27 years that their representation in Parliament could wait.
It shouldn’t have taken this long. It shouldn’t have been packaged with a constituency-redrawing exercise designed to benefit one party. It shouldn’t exclude OBC women. It shouldn’t require a census that the government itself has delayed indefinitely.
But it is, at last, law.
And when it is finally implemented — whenever that may be — it will be because generations of women demanded it, opposition parties kept it alive in parliamentary discourse, and even BJP’s most cynical electoral calculation accidentally collided with the right side of history.
History doesn’t always arrive cleanly. Sometimes it arrives wrapped in political manipulation — and you take it anyway.
“We didn’t win today. But the women of India didn’t lose either. And that, in this Parliament, under this government — is the only victory worth counting.”
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~Keshav Jha ( Political Strategist)
@ksvpndit