A special sitting of Parliament has been called for April 16-18 to take up two proposed legislations to amend the Constitution and expand the Lok Sabha from 543 to 816 seats, reserving one-third of those seats for women.
The delimitation of India's electoral map has emerged as a major sticking point between PM Narendra Modi's government and Congress-led Opposition.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi says the changes fulfil a promise all parties made together, but Congress leader Sonia Gandhi has written that the real issue is not women's reservation at all, but the delimitation exercise being bundled with it.
The government will need some Opposition help to pass these bills, as constitutional amendments need a two-third majority which the BJP-led NDA does not have.
The bills propose using the 2011 Census, not the ongoing Census, to redraw constituency boundaries before the 2029 general elections.
PM Modi claimed the special move would fulfil what all parties wanted, recalling that in 2023, when the original women's reservation bill was passed, all parties had said it should be implemented by 2029.
Sonia Gandhi, however, drew a sharp distinction between the women's quota and the delimitation exercise accompanying it, arguing that any delimitation exercise must be preceded by a new census.
The BJP has said a flat 50% increase does not disturb the proportional shares of states in Parliament, but Sonia Gandhi questioned the timing of the government's change of position from 2023.
She accused the government of a "tearing hurry to bulldoze extremely far-reaching changes to our polity" and demanded that women's reservation be implemented immediately, without fresh delimitation or change in number of Lok Sabha seats.
