The Constitution amendment Bill the BJP-led NDA government will pilot on April 16 to advance the rollout of 33 per cent women’s reservation in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies to the 2029 General Election proposes to raise the strength of the Lower House from the current 543 to 850 MPs.A copy of the Draft Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty-First Amendment) Bill, 2026, accessed by The Tribune, says the government will use population data based on the 2011 Census to delimit constituencies of the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for reserving one-third seats for women. This 33 per cent quota will have proportional sub-quotas for SC and ST women. On April 16, the government will pilot three Bills, which it circulated to Lok Sabha members today.The first Bill will amend relevant Articles of the Constitution to achieve two broad objectives — first, to delink 33 per cent women’s quota rollout from the delimitation exercise following the 2026 Census (this provision was enshrined in the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, also called women’s quota law, passed in 2023) andsecond, to lift the 2026 freeze on delimitation as currently provided in the 84th Constitution Amendment Act of 2001. The current Lok Sabha and state assemblies’ structures are based on the delimitation exercise done on the basis of 1971 census.The second Bill to be presented on April 16 is called the Delimitation Bill, 2026, and seeks to set up a delimitation commission, which will redraw the Lok Sabha and state Assembly constituencies based on the 2011 Census figures.The third Bill, titled The Union Territories Laws Amendment Bill, 2026, will amend the Government of Union Territories Act, 1963, the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Act, 1991, and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019. The provisions contained in these three Acts are at present based on the existing constitutional framework relating to population, delimitation and reservation.These provisions need to be aligned with the revised constitutional scheme, which The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, proposes to put in place. This principal draft law, which the PM Narendra Modi-led government will bring on April 16, seeks to change all current constitutional frameworks relating to delimitation, allocation of seats, along with the meaning of “population”.This Bill will amend Article 55 of the Constitution which, for the purposes of delimitation, defines “population” as follows, “The population ascertained at the last preceding census of which the relevant figures have been published.”The new proposed definition of population is “the population as ascertained at such Census, as Parliament may by law determine under Article 82 or Article 10, of which the relevant figures have been published.” Only the figures of the 2011 Census are currently published, which means that will form the basis for delimitation.This same draft Bill proposes to amend Article 81, which deals with the structure of the Lok Sabha and says two things — The House of the People shall consist of not more than 815 members chosen by direct elections from territorial constituencies in states and not more than 35 members to represent the UTs chosen in such manner as Parliament may by law provide.This takes the number of Lok Sabha MPs to 850 (815 and 35). The Bill also proposes reservation for women for 15 years after which Parliament needs to take a fresh call.Congress MP from Chandigarh Manish Tewari told The Tribune, “The Bills circulated today will only skew the federal balance to the detriment of the southern, north-western and eastern states, which will bring down their relative weight in the larger national polity. This has implications not only for federalism but also for the relative bargaining power of states which have performed better on development indices between 1971 and 2011. There is no proposal of any pro rata increase in the number of seats from different states in the Lok Sabha,” Tewari said.Tewari said the proposal was to have an 850-member Lok Sabha. “Divide the 2011 Indian population of 1.2 billion with 850 seats and you get the key number of 14 lakh, which will be used to calculate the seats of states in the newly proposed Lok Sabha. Kerala will see an addition of just three Lok Sabha seats when you divide its 2011 population with 14 lakh. Punjab had a population of 2.7 crore in 2011. Divide this by 14 lakh and you have 19 seats — a gain of six seats as against a gain of 62 seats for UP, which had a population of 20 crore in 2011. Divide 20 crore with 14 lakh and UP will get nearly 142 seats as against 80 today,” Tewari explained.