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On Thursday, India’s Parliament passed a historical legislation. The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023 that it cleared puts in place a legal framework to reserve a third of seats in the Lower House of Parliament as well as the state Legislative Assemblies for women.
The history of a women’s reservation bill is long. It was first brought into Parliament by the United Front government way back in 1996. The current bill is similar to all previous attempts with one significant diversion: it fixes the delimitation of seats in Parliament as a necessary condition to reserve seats for women. This means that the actual implementation of women’s…