Centre contemplating to raise Lok Sabha, State/UT seat strength by 50 percent to raise women’s reservation

STC NEWS MONITORING DESK
SRINAGAR, MARCH 25 (STC): The Government of India’s proposal to increase Lok Sabha and Assembly seats, and also to scale up the women’s reservation in these Houses has trigerred debate across media landscape where opinion makers are busy in evaluating its impact on the political front.
Actually, the Government is planning to increase the strength of Lok Sabha and Assembly seats across states and Union Territories by 50 per cent to implement political reservation for women ahead of the 2029 Lok Sabha polls. If all goes well as per the plan, it will lead to significant overhaul of the politics in the States and Union Territories across the country.
In the context of Jammu amd Kashmir, this proposal means that the strength of Assembly seats in Jammu & Kashmir would rise from 90 to 135, while the Lok Sabha seats would increase from five to seven or eight.
As the Centre plans to reserve 33 percent seats for women, this would mean 45 seats reserved for women in the J&K Assembly, and two seats in the Lok Sabha if the number of seats is increased to seven, or three seats if it goes up to eight, experts in politics said.

The Centre is holding consultations with different parties, including opposition parties in the Lok Sabha.
The National Conference, the only regional party with representation in Parliament, says it has not been consulted by the Union Government on the matter.
“No such consultation has been held with us,” NC’s Rajya Sabha MP Choudhary Muhammad Ramzan said, as quoted by a cross section of the local media.
He said he participated in a meeting of the opposition INDIA bloc over the issue.
“It was decided in the meeting that the Centre should convene an all-party meeting on the proposed move to explain the contours of the proposed legislations and provide clarity on it,” he said.
If the Centre is able to pass the proposed legislations, it would immediately constitute a delimitation commission for redrawing the boundaries of Lok Sabha and Assembly seats.
As per the proposal, the 2011 Census would be the basis for the delimitation exercise.

(Straight Talk Communications)