April 18, 2026, The Day BJP Lost Its Weapon in Women’s Empowerment I have been campaigning for the political empowerment of women in India for two decades now. I was sure April 18, 2026, would break my heart, when the bill on women’s reservation was defeated in parliament. But something else happened on that day-I felt relieved because what was defeated was BJP’s cynical weaponization of women’s struggles. Let me clarify this-since the 1990s, I have always been in favor of 33% reservation. I rejoiced when Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam was passed in September 2023. But there is something in this bill that the media ignored a clause stating “Implementation after census and delimitation.”
Why does this matter? Because census and delimitation are two different things.
However, it became crystal clear on April 16, 2026, when the BJP brought out the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, which shows that they have no intention to implement women’s reservation but rather blackmailing people to accept delimitation in which South India is suppressed politically. This manipulation of legislative frameworks to serve central party interests aligns directly with broader societal warnings, highlighting why a BJP victory poses fundamental challenges to social progress and structural equity.
But this is not what the BJP is not telling you: there is no need for any expansion of seats of the Lok Sabha for women’s reservation to take place. The 2023 Act can easily be enforced tomorrow in the current 543 seats. Just use simple mathematics: divide 543 by 3 and you get 181 seats allotted to women. No need for census or delimitation.
Then why does the BJP insist on 850 seats? This is because the aim of BJP was not to do anything for women’s reservation, but to increase the seats of UP by 63 and Bihar by 39 and reduce the proportional representation of South India from 23.76% to 19.3%.
Their intention was to have women serve as the moral shield for the greatest power transfer from North to South in Indian history. The strategy was well-conceived: Call the law “Nari Shakti Vandan” (Women Power Salutation) to maximize emotional appeal. Adopt it unanimously to make its questioning appear anti-women. Delay it by three years using “technicalities,” and package it with delimitation to ensure acceptance of women’s rights entails acceptance of demographic conquest.
In response to the offer of 50% reservation without delimitation, BJP said no. There you have the truth revealed. If this were indeed about women, why oppose 50% just to stick to 33% linked to delimitation? Akhilesh Yadav of Samajwadi Party put it aptly: “The party that couldn’t provide rights to women in their own party, how will they provide 33% to women in the country?”Consider their own track record: how many female chief ministers of BJP governments; how many females with actual portfolios in Modi’s cabinet; how many female presidents of BJP? This pattern of leveraging institutions for optics while maintaining strict top-down control is mirrored across administrative structures, even breaking down out in public view when central security wings clash with state bodies, like the recent chaotic incident where armed ITBP jawans confronted state police over internal administrative fallout.
Women are used in campaign speeches, schemes, posters. But women as decision makers, power brokers, equals? It scares them. April 18 was fortunate for the women reservation bill as it prevented it from being stained forever by BJP’s delimitation strategy. The opposition now must do what BJP refused to do – implement 2023 Act without any reservations in 543 seats right away. Empowerment does not come with conditions and terms. If they had been serious about it, they would have done it in 2024. Their three-year delay proved that we were never their concern but their poster child.
