By TRH Op-Ed Desk
Manish Anand argues the Modi government’s plan to expand Parliament to implement women’s reservation has little to do with representation — and everything to do with protecting sitting seats
New Delhi, August 10, 2026 — As Parliament’s Monsoon Session resumes normal functioning after the students’ protests led by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), speculation is building that the Modi government could reintroduce the delimitation bill and the women’s reservation bill as a combined package — even though neither currently appears on the formal agenda. Political analyst Manish Anand says the timing and structure of this potential move deserve far more scrutiny than they’ve received.
The two bills were defeated in the last session after failing to secure the two-thirds majority required in the Lok Sabha, with a united opposition blocking passage. Anand in his monologue for The Raisina Hills notes that the NDA still lacks that two-thirds threshold in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha — raising the question of whether the government will attempt to reintroduce the bills at all, or wait until the arithmetic favours it.
A Parliament Nearly Double Its Current Size
What concerns Anand most isn’t just the bills themselves, but their design: a plan that could push Lok Sabha strength from 545 to roughly 860 seats, with a proportional jump in the Rajya Sabha and every state assembly nationwide. “This entire scheme raises a fundamental question about the government’s intentions,” Anand said, arguing that such an expansion would multiply the number of legislators — and their benefits — across the country by the thousands.
He points to the cost implications as significant and largely unexamined. MPs currently receive unlimited air travel, often in first class — a single Chennai-Delhi round trip can run to roughly ₹80,000, footed by the Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha secretariat rather than paid personally. “Multiply that kind of expenditure by a nearly doubled Parliament, and the burden on taxpayers becomes enormous,” Anand said.
“A Special Species” Among Taxpayer-Funded Citizens
Anand was especially critical of the pension structure available to lawmakers, noting that ordinary retired employees typically draw a single pension, while sitting MPs face no such restriction — some are entitled to draw two, three, or even four pensions if they’ve held multiple legislative positions across their careers. “Our lawmakers function almost like a separate species with no cap on how many pensions they can collect,” he said, adding that bungalows in Delhi, personal staff, and an annual Local Area Development allowance running into crores over five years add further costs, alongside telephone and travel perks.
Why BJP Is Unlikely to Risk Delimitation Without a Special Majority
Do Lawmakers Even Make Law?
Anand raised a pointed question about whether expanding the ranks of MPs and MLAs would actually improve lawmaking, given how legislation currently passes through Parliament. He argued that ruling-party MPs largely function as a “rubber stamp,” approving government bills without meaningful scrutiny or debate — which, he said, undermines the very premise that more lawmakers are needed to do more law-making. “If they aren’t doing the work of making laws in the first place, why increase their numbers, and why extend them so many additional benefits?” he asked.
Squeezed Middle Class, Expanding Political Class
Anand connected this expansion plan to what he described as a broader disconnect from the economic pressures facing ordinary Indians — rising costs of education and healthcare, a private hospital sector he says operates with little oversight over billing, and a middle class he describes as already stretched thin. He noted the apparent contradiction of a government that distributes free grain to roughly 800 million people while simultaneously seeking to expand the size and cost of the political class.
Reservation Without Expansion Is Possible, Anand Argues
Anand’s central argument is that implementing women’s reservation does not require expanding the total number of seats at all — it could be done within the current strength of Parliament, “if the intent were genuinely honest.” He suggested the real motivation for pairing seat expansion with reservation is to protect incumbents: since reserving a third of existing seats for women would displace many current, mostly male MPs and MLAs, growing the overall pool lets sitting members avoid losing their own seats. “That looks like self-interest, not principle,” he said, arguing this is why the united opposition rejected the bills’ current form in the last session.
A Fragmenting Opposition Changes the Math
Anand noted that splits within the Trinamool Congress and Shiv Sena — along with the possibility of further fractures in other opposition parties — may be exactly what the BJP is counting on to eventually secure the two-thirds majority needed to pass both bills as originally structured. Even if that happens, he argued, the beneficiaries would be political parties and incumbent lawmakers, not ordinary citizens. “If there’s substance to this argument, then this entire plan serves politicians, not the public,” Anand said.
(Manish Anand is a political analyst. Views expressed are his own.)
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