As the dust settles after the defeat of the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, in the Lok Sabha — the first major legislative defeat for the BJP since it came to power — one thing is not yet clear: what made the BJP convene a special sitting of the Budget Session of Parliament to advance the implementation of the women’s reservation law that had been hanging fire for three decades?This is a question which continues to tantalise. The BJP surely would have known it did not have the requisite numbers. Of the 528 members present in the House on April 17, 298 voted in favour of the Bill and 230 opposed it, with the ruling NDA ultimately 54 short of the two-thirds majority mark of 352 needed for the Constitution amendment Bill to clear the House. It was too large a gap and could have been bridged only if the Congress had played ball. That looked unlikely. Or if a couple of the bigger Opposition parties — TMC, the Samajwadi Party or the DMK — had come on board. Given the contentious issues that had been raised, this was difficult for the TMC and the DMK as the session was held in the midst of elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, and the entire Opposition had expressed misgivings about the timing of the move. It also did not help that there were hardly any proper consultations with the Opposition and that the drafts of the three Bills were circulated only a day before the session.AdvertisementIt surprised many that the BJP did not demonstrate the meticulous planning — and a killer instinct — it has become known for. It was curious that the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, passed in September 2023, which was to be taken up for amendment at the special session, was notified only on April 16, almost 20 months later.The Prime Minister made a general appeal for support. To allay their fears, the Union Home Minister made an offer to bring an amended Bill “within an hour“ to increase the seats in every state by a flat 50% and maintain the ratio between the states. If such a proposal had been part of the backchannel talks to effect a breakthrough, the story might have been different.The BJP was aware that it would encounter resistance from the South. The Opposition’s real concern this time, however — and what united them was the fear — that the BJP wanted to gain a “permanent” electoral advantage through early delimitation and that it was using the amendment Bills only as a “ruse” for that.AdvertisementThe BJP did not get the politics of negotiation right this time. That was essentially because of a deep distrust between it and the Opposition about each other’s intentions.Likely reasonsWe can only speculate about the reasons why the government decided to convene the session hastily.One, the government may have calculated that, victory or defeat, even the attempt to pass the Bills would help reinforce the Prime Minister’s credentials as a leader committed to empowering women.The party may also have hoped that defeat and denial might agitate women and draw them more to its side than the passage of the Bills might have done. As long as the Ram Mandir was not built, it agitated Hindu opinion. Once the temple in Ayodhya came up, it ceased to be an emotive electoral issue.The BJP knows that as important as it is to give women a decision-making role in the elected bodies, women’s reservation in Parliament and state Assemblies may not be an issue which excites the masses of women, at least not at the moment. But it could provide the party fresh ammunition to attack Mamata Banerjee, the contest in West Bengal becoming a close one.The PM lost no time in targeting the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal for its role in bringing down the Bills, the idea being to dent Mamata’s mahila constituency, the mainstay of her base along with the minorities. But at the time of writing, and according to some BJP candidates, it had created hardly any ripples, “but then Delhi news takes time to filter down in Bengal”. Besides, Mamata’s welfare programmes have been popular with women, though law and order has emerged as an issue with them of late.Given the uncertainty about how the war in West Asia will play out and the impact it will have in India, women everywhere are on the BJP’s radar. They have emerged as a critical constituency and demonstrated their ability to sway an election, be it in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, or Bihar. The BJP will pitch for their support in multiple ways, not limited to women’s reservation alone. Women’s reservation is only one note in the symphony the BJP hopes to create. It was not surprising, therefore, that within hours the government announced Rs 5,000 health cover for poor women.Second, if the narrative goes on to take the shape of a “women versus regional subnationalism” — as the southern states oppose the impending delimitation — it could squeeze the Congress out of the picture. Tamil Nadu CM M K Stalin has already given the call to “defeat Delhi”. If unhappiness against the impending delimitation, viewed as discriminatory against the Southern states, grows, it can, in the future, create a counter reaction from the North. That may help the BJP on the one hand and the regional parties on the other. More than three decades ago, the Congress had fallen between two stools in the Mandal versus Mandir fight.What could be decisiveUltimately, everything may boil down to the “E” factor: how the economy shapes up in the weeks to come and how rising prices and the availability of gas cylinders, among other things, affect women’s voting choices. Much will, it goes without saying, also hinge on the West Asia conflict.I recall a senior BJP leader saying during Narendra Modi’s first term as PM, “You think the BJP won in 2014 because of the Anna Hazare movement, we won because of rising prices the UPA could not control.”The Bill to operationalise reservation for women has been kicked down the road yet again. Given the timetable of the ongoing Census, it is unlikely that women’s reservation will be operationalised before 2034, maybe not till 2039, despite the PM’s assurances that his party will keep trying.you may likeThe southern leaders are demanding that the formula to redraw the constituencies be changed. They would like it to be contingent on population, but also give weightage to metrics such as population control and development indices. This is easier said than done.All this is in the future. For the moment, with their inability to come to a consensus on how to operationalise women’s reservation, Parliament has let down women yet one more time.(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide.)