Women largest minority in India: Supreme Court seeks Centre's response on implementing women's reservation in Parliament

The Supreme Court on Monday sought the Central government's response to a public interest litigation (PIL) petition seeking the implementation of a women's reservation law, which mandates that one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha, State legislative assemblies, and the Delhi Assembly, will be reserved for women. .The Bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and R Mahadevan also made some pertinent remarks in favour of such reservation, saying women are the largest minority in the country."Preamble (to the Constitution of India) says (all citizens are entitled to) political and social equality. Who is the largest minority in this country? It is the woman.. almost 48 percent. This is about the political equality of the woman," Justice Nagarathna orally observed.The Court then issued notice on the plea filed by Congress leader Dr. Jaya Thakur seeking the implementation of the Women's Reservation Bill 2024 without waiting for the conduct of a fresh delimitation exercise..Representing Dr. Thakur, Senior Advocate Shobha Gupta said, "After 75 years (of India's independence from British colonial rule), it is unfortunate that we (women) have to move court for the representation... They have to reserve only one third of total seats. They have decided to grant the reservation based on some data."The Bench proceeded to seek the Central government's response to the plea, after noting that the Court has limitations when it comes to interfering in such policy matters. "When is the delimitation exercise there? Serve it to government... Enforcement of law is up to the executive and we cannot issue a mandamus. Issue notice to respondents. Let the central agency be served," the Court said. .The Women's Reservation Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on September 20, 2023, and by the Rajya Sabha on September 21 that year, before it received the President's assent on September 28, 2023.The Bill added Article 334A to the Constitution of India. This new Article states that reservations for women in the Lok Sabha and State legislative assemblies will come into effect only after a delimitation exercise is carried out. This process will take place after the results of the first census conducted after the amendment are made public.Dr. Thakur's plea, however, calls for women's reservations to be carried out without waiting to complete such a delimitation exercise.To this end, the plea seeks the declaration of the words "after an exercise of delimitation is undertaken for this purpose after the relevant figures for the first census" in Article 334A as void ab initio.The petition was initially filed in 2023 with a prayer to implement women's reservations in parliament before the general elections of 2024. However, it was later re-filed in 2025 and came up for hearing in open court for the first time today. .Follow Bar and Bench channel on WhatsAppDownload the Bar and Bench Mobile app for instant access to the latest legal news.