The 106th Constitutional Amendment Act, popularly called the Women's Reservation Bill, provides for 33% reservation of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies. However, its actual implementation is linked to the completion of the next delimitation exercise, which itself depends on a fresh census, pushing effective enforcement well into the future.
This raises questions about whether the reform is substantive or symbolic, and highlights the gap between constitutional promise and administrative rollout in India's federal and electoral machinery.
For exams, this is significant for understanding constitutional amendments, sunset/commencement clauses, delimitation, census linkage, and debates on descriptive versus substantive representation of women in legislatures.