India to roll out 33% quota for women in 2029 Lok Sabha and State Assembly polls

India intends to roll out 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies—to be based on a fresh delimitation exercise—in time for the 2029 general elections, said three people aware of the details on Wednesday.

- BY S VENKAT NARAYAN

The delimitation exercise is also likely to consider the demand from the southern states to ensure their proportionate representation in Parliament is not reduced, the people added.

Last week, the Union government said that the long-delayed census will be carried out in two phases before March 1 2027, announcing a crucial exercise that will enumerate caste for the first time since independence and likely become the basis for delimitation.

The 2029 timeline is an aggressive one, and this is the first time it is being mentioned.

Government officials are banking on digitisation to speed up the process of releasing the population numbers in time for the delimitation process, which itself typically takes between two to three years to finalise, given the widespread consultation process.

The bigger challenge for the Delimitation Commission will be to address the concerns of the southern states, which have demanded that population not be the sole criteria for deciding representation. That would effectively mean punishing them for getting their population under control, the key national imperative in the 1970s and 1980s.