Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

@article{206113,
        author = {Dr Veena K},
        title = {The Politics of Postponement: Census, Delimitation, and the Implementation of the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {2},
        pages = {784-790},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=206113},
        abstract = {The Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, completes a 27-year legislative effort to reserve one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies. This article examines the Women's Reservation Bill through a historical-institutional lens, tracing its development from the 1988 National Perspective Plan, the 73rd and 74th Amendments, repeated parliamentary failures, and its passage in September 2023. Using statistics on women's representation (1952–2024), international data, and analysis of Articles 330A, 332A, and 334A, it evaluates the legislation’s design, especially its conditional implementation linked to the census and delimitation. While the Adhiniyam is a significant constitutional milestone with symbolic value, concerns about delayed implementation, lack of OBC sub-quotas, exclusion of the Rajya Sabha and Legislative Councils, and constituency rotation highlight the gap between law and effective representation. The paper recommends timely implementation, intra-party democracy, and capacity-building to convert descriptive into substantive representation.},
        keywords = {Women's Reservation Bill, Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 106th Constitutional Amendment, political representation, gender quotas, delimitation, Indian Parliament, descriptive representation},
        month = {July},
        }