Deservedly dead: The Hindu Editorial on the defeat of the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026

In what was a foregone conclusion, the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026 failed to secure the two-thirds majority required for a constitutional amendment. While 298 members voted in its favour and 230 against, the Bill needed 352 votes — two-thirds of the 528 present and voting — to pass. The government subsequently shelved the companion Delimitation Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, saying they could not be viewed in isolation. During his reply to the debate, Home Minister Amit Shah gave a verbal guarantee that southern States would see their presence in an 816-member Lok Sabha increase in the same proportion as their current share, even offering to adjourn the House for an hour to redraft the Bill with a 50% uniform increase as an official amendment. The Opposition dismissed this. The obvious question: if proportional increase was always the intent, why was it not in the Bill? The language as tabled clearly mandated delimitation on the basis of the latest Census — currently 2011 — which would have reduced the share of southern, eastern, and northeastern States due to their lower population growth relative to the Hindi heartland States. Why the haste to push through a controversial constitutional amendment when the 2026-27 Census is still under way? Also, there was no reason to link women’s reservation, on which there is all-party consensus, to delimitation in this manner. The bizarre smoke-and-mirrors approach, no doubt intended to confuse and divide the Opposition, made a mockery of the parliamentary process.

It is to the credit of the INDIA bloc that it voted as one against this methodical madness; overlooking their differences, parties such as the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Trinamool Congress, the Left and the DMK ensured floor coordination. Conversely, one must note the naivety of the Telugu Desam Party and the AIADMK, which spoke in favour of the Bill, on the strength of the Home Minister’s verbal assurances despite the conflicting language in the text, when Andhra Pradesh stood to lose five seats and Tamil Nadu 11 under the Bill’s own terms. This defeat should chasten the government. It would now have to implement women’s reservation through the constitutionally mandated route: complete the 2026-27 Census, and refer delimitation and Lok Sabha expansion to a parliamentary committee for genuine consensus. The two-thirds threshold exists precisely to prevent far-reaching structural changes from being rammed through without broad agreement and this safeguard held today.