Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday questioned the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government’s commitment to women’s empowerment, saying the ruling coalition had turned legislations to expedite the roll-out of the women’s reservation in legislative bodies into an electoral strategy rather than a genuine effort to empower women.
“BJP, along with its allies, has 21 governments in states and union territories. Within these states, how many are women chief ministers? Even your Delhi chief minister doesn’t have the rights of a CM, she is a half CM,” said Yadav, a reference to the limited powers of Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta, the only woman chief minister from the BJP. Unlike full-fledged states, Delhi is a union territory with a legislature and the chief minister lacks control over police, public order, land, and services which remain under the central government through the lieutenant governor.
Yadav continued. “The organisation which BJP has come from, how many women are in it?” he said, a reference to the ruling party’s ideological fount, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
The Delimitation Bill, 2026, the Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty-first Amendment) Bill, 2026, and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, seek to raise Lok Sabha seats and conduct delimitation based on the latest, effectively the 2011 census figures, to roll out the quota from the 2029 general elections.
Participating in a debate on three bills introduced in the Lok Sabha to amend the Women’s Reservation Act, 2023, and set up a delimitation commission, Yadav accused the BJP of turning “nari” (women) into a “nara” (slogan), and demanded that women from Muslim and OBC groups also be given reservation under the women’s reservation framework.
The Kannauj MP underlined that his party supported women’s reservation but questioned why it was being suddenly rushed.
“The truth is that the BJP wants to postpone the census. Delaying the census also delays the caste census, because it would raise the question of reservation, which the BJP and its allies do not want to address,” he said, adding that women’s reservation without census and caste data would remain incomplete.
“When we exposed the Form 7 and SIR scams that were removing voters’ names, the BJP responded by bringing in these Bills. This time too, the BJP is trying to use women for political games, but it will not succeed,” said Yadav.
He agreed with Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi, who alleged that the BJP wants to change the electoral map of the country through delimitation.
“The BJP devised a plan as to how Lok Sabha constituencies would be increased so that only BJP gets political benefits. We saw that in Assam and Jammu & Kashmir,” said Yadav. He added that the census must be conducted first, and delimitation should follow on the basis of accurate data, questioning how reservation can be determined if the underlying data is flawed.
