Centre plans special Session to pass delimitation Bill, says it has votes to spare; Congress calls it bluster

The Centre is considering a special Session of Parliament to pass the Delimitation Bill, 2026, and is confident it now has the numbers that it lacked in April, government sources said on Thursday. No dates or length have been announced.

The sources said the government expects to command at least 15 to 16 more votes than needed. A Constitution Amendment Bill needs a two-thirds majority, which on a House of 543 with three vacancies works out to 361 votes. Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh said Home Minister Amit Shah gave journalists a slightly wider margin in an informal conversation on Thursday afternoon, and dismissed the whole claim.

What the government is proposing

The Bill is linked, in the government’s telling, to putting the Women’s Reservation Act, 2023 into effect. The amendment seeks to raise the ceiling on Lok Sabha seats from 543 to a maximum of 850 and to base the exercise on the 2011 Census, which would let one-third reservation for women apply in Parliament and State Assemblies. The Constitution now caps the House at 550 members.

PRS Legislative Research, which tracks Bills, notes that the 2027 Census has a reference date of March 1, 2027, and that a delimitation based on it is unlikely to be finished before the 2029 election. Using the 2011 figures is the government’s route to getting women’s reservation in place by then.

There is also talk of a change to the text. In talks with Opposition parties, especially from the south, in April, the government said it would raise seats for every state by 50% so that the shares fixed on the 1971 Census stay the same. The Bill circulated in April did not contain that clause, and the plan under discussion now may add it. That would speak to the worry of southern states that a population-based redraw would cost them influence. Nothing on this has been confirmed.

What Ramesh said

In a post on X on Thursday, Ramesh said the Home Minister had “revived the ‘delimitation plantation’ today while talking informally to a group of journalists.”

“He told them this afternoon that a 3-day special session will soon be called and the Bills will be passed by a 15-18 vote margin,” Ramesh wrote. “He had said the same thing seven months earlier but on April 17th faced a humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha by a decisive margin, falling short by over 50 votes. He is the master of bluff and bluster. His bulldozer did not work then and will not work again.”

No government response to that account had been published by 9:15 pm IST.

How we got here

The delimitation Bills so far

1. Apr 16, 2026Constitution (131st Amendment), Delimitation and Union Territories Laws Bills introduced in the Lok Sabha
2. Apr 17, 2026Amendment defeated 298 to 230; the other two Bills do not proceed
3. Aug 13, 2026Monsoon Session adjourned sine die, but never prorogued
4. Oct 19, 2026Kiren Rijiju writes to Mallikarjun Kharge on consultations
5. Nov 2, 2026Amit Shah offers a special session on the electoral rolls
6. Nov 12, 2026Government sources say a special Session is being weighed

The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill was defeated on April 17, the Modi government’s first defeat on a constitutional amendment. Our explainer on the failed amendment sets out the vote and the history of the seat freeze.

Since then the argument has moved to procedure. On October 19, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju wrote to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge that the government had consulted seven other parties after the Congress gave no dates; our report on that letter has the detail. On November 2, Shah repeated his offer of a special session, then on the electoral rolls rather than delimitation, as we reported in this story.

Why Parliament can meet at short notice

The Monsoon Session ended on August 13 when both Houses were adjourned sine die, but it has not been prorogued. It has now stayed open for 91 days, past the previous record of 87 days set in 2008. That leaves the presiding officers free to recall the House quickly.

An extended sitting of the existing Session needs a minimum of two days’ notice. Convening a fresh Session needs at least 14 days. If the government chose the second route today, the earliest sitting would fall in the last week of November.

The politics of the numbers

Ramesh had said on November 3 that the Home Minister was “still entertaining ideas of calling a Special Session to pass the Delimitation Bills with a super-tainted two-thirds majority,” and asked for an all-party meeting to see the new proposals in advance. His position on Thursday was that the numbers claimed by Shah would not materialise.

The arithmetic decides it. A two-thirds majority is counted among members present and voting, so absences help a government; walkouts and abstentions by smaller parties also change the sum. On April 17 the amendment got 298 votes against 230. Ramesh puts the shortfall at more than 50 votes. For the Bill to pass this time, that gap would have to close, which means winning over parties that voted against or stayed away in April.

The NDA says delimitation is a constitutional necessity once new census data arrives, and that it is the only way to give women their one-third reservation. The INDIA bloc led by Congress wants the quota applied immediately to the present 543 seats and opposes tying it to a redraw of constituencies.

What happens next

The government has set no date. The next signs to watch are a notice from the Lok Sabha Secretariat, either extending the Monsoon Session or summoning a new one, and any all-party meeting, which Congress has demanded and the government has not agreed to. If the Bill returns, its text will show whether the 50% rise in every state’s seats has been written in.