‘Women Are the Largest Minority’: Supreme Court Questions Delay in Implementing Reservation Law

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday urged the Union government to respond to a petition pressing for the immediate rollout of the Nari Shakti Vandan Act, 2023, the landmark law guaranteeing one-third reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.

A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and R Mahadevan issued notice to the Centre and used the hearing to make a larger point: that political equality remains unfinished business in India. “Our Preamble says all citizens are entitled to political and social equality. Who is the largest minority in this country? It is the women, almost 48 per cent,” Justice Nagarathna observed, noting that the debate on representation is not merely about numbers but constitutional values.

The petition, filed by Congress leader Jaya Thakur, challenges the clause in the 2023 Act that postpones its implementation until after the next Census and subsequent delimitation exercise. Thakur’s counsel, senior advocate Shobha Gupta, argued that it was “deeply unfortunate” that women had to move court for political representation even 75 years after Independence.

While the bench emphasised that enforcement of the law lay within the executive’s domain, it acknowledged that the absence of women in law-making bodies was a democratic deficit. “The courts have limitations in policy matters,” Justice Nagarathna said, “but the conversation about equality must continue.”

The Nari Shakti Vandan Act, passed unanimously in Parliament in September 2023 and assented to by President Droupadi Murmu, reserves one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for 15 years, with Parliament empowered to extend it. Yet the fine print delays its application until new constituency boundaries are drawn after the next Census, effectively pushing the reform into an uncertain future.

Women currently make up only 15 per cent of the Lok Sabha and less than 10 per cent in most state assemblies. Political parties, despite public pledges, continue to field women candidates in single digits. The new law was seen as a corrective to that systemic exclusion, but the waiting clause has turned optimism into frustration among activists.

“The Constitution doesn’t ask women to wait for equality,” Thakur’s plea asserts, calling the delay clause “void-ab-initio” and urging the court to direct immediate implementation.

The case has reignited a deeper conversation: if women are nearly half the population and the Constitution enshrines equality, must their political presence still depend on the next census? The question now lies before a government that must choose between procedure and principle.