For someone who knew he was going to lose the point, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, principal architect of the Constitution 131st Amendment Bill 2026, was unusually composed in the Lok Sabha today.As he replied to the debate on the Bill, which a united Opposition, wary of alterations in India’s electoral map by way of a proposed delimitation, defeated, Shah spoke with full consciousness that the agenda he was advocating was set to fail.“The women of India will never forgive you. Be ready to face their wrath at the hustings. You will not even get an escape route,” he said even before the Bill was defeated, giving away the BJP strategy of painting the Opposition anti-women in the election campaigns and narratives going forward.Related news: Women reservation Bill fails to clear Lok Sabha testAttempt to redraw electoral map: Rahul Gandhi tears into CentreCongress’ outreach, Stalin’s concerns yield united Opposition rare win in ParliamentEarlier today, Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi also spoke publicly of how the BJP knew what it was doing when it brought the three Bills and tied them all together linking women’s reservation to delimitation, which had not happened since 1971. “The BJP knew very clearly that this Bill actually cannot be passed. They were not stupid. This was a panic reaction by the BJP.The PM at any cost needed to send two messages. One, he needed to change the electoral map of India; and two, he wanted to send a message again that he is pro-women,” Rahul said, calling out the saffron plan.The BJP made no bones about the issue.In fact, the first hint that they pushed the legislative agenda knowing it would fail came when Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in the Lok Sabha yesterday and told the Opposition, “If you support the Bill, no one benefits because it becomes a common agenda. If you do not, I will benefit for sure.”Soon as the Bill fell, government ministers and BJP MPs charged out of the Lok Sabha raising “Hai hai” slogans against the Congress-led INDIA bloc even as top party strategists got down to designing what they plan to call “Nari shakti virodhi vipaksh.”Inside the House today also, Shah recalled how the women’s quota Bill had fallen in the Congress-led UPA regime in 2008. “The Bill fell because of the Congress’ allies, which means they stalled it at the instance of the Congress. How can an ally stall their own government’s Bill?” said Shah, accusing the Congress of opposing political representation for women, half of India’s population, for the fifth time since 1996 today.Saffron sources, meanwhile, acknowledged that the BJP was short of electoral issues, having exhausted all major agendas from abrogation of Article 370, Ram Temple, CAA to now UCC. Something had to be done in advance of the 2029 Lok Sabha election cycle to seek and favourably spin the narrative; enter—women’s reservation and a sudden decision to pilot a law passed in 2023 and tweak it to advance the rollout of the women’s reservation for the 2029 election cycle.It was against this backdrop that Shah repeatedly told the Opposition that it would need to face the “wrath of Indian women when it faces elections”. With the future political plan in place, BJP leaders wore a quiet calm, barely looking defeated. One of them summed up the mood: “We have lost the battle to win the war.”