Authored By: Syeda Momina Anjum
Sultan Ul Uloom Collage of Law
Introduction
According to the seminal analysis of modern democratic backsliding , “Killing a Constitution with a Thousand Cuts” by Tarunabh Khaitan, BJP government deployed almost all the techniques of the “ play book” of 21st century autocratic legalism , an idea originally defined by Wojciech Sadurski. This strategy involves an incremental but systemic attack on existing frameworks of accountability, ensuring they either become subservient to the political executive or are captured by party loyalists.[1] The recent, defeated 131st Constitutional Amendment Bill exemplifies this trajectory; if it had passed, it could have permanently altered the political dynamic in favour of the ruling party. This article analyses how the 131st Amendment utilizes “salami slicing” tactics and “autocratic legalism” veiling majoritarian power grab under a gift wrapped bow of feminism reform.
Section I: Legal Framework — The Architecture of Incremental Subversion
In constitutional theory, a healthy democracy relies on a three-part triad: democracy, constitutionalism, and liberalism, there are variations in Democracy. Autocratic legalists find a way to remove liberalism while keeping the outer shell of democracy and constitutionalism. They use legitimate democratic elections to gain power and instead of breaking the law, they use their legislative majorities to pass new, highly technical laws to serve their agenda.[2]
A constitutional amendment that is not prima facie unconstitutional but may threaten democratic principles through incremental erosion. It is enacted in accordance with the formal procedural rules of amending the constitution and does not necessarily undermine the constitutional order or value in a revolutionary manner to the extent of changing its constitutional identity or abandon unamendable principles , whether explicit or implicit. Instead, constitutional amendment is prima facie constitutional but illegitimate. It is illegitimate not because it is not representational or not reason-based. It is illegitimate from a democratic point of view because it undermines democracy as part of a larger and incremental process. It is one ‘slice’ of the salami that is the overall project of democratic erosion.[3]
Although the 131st Amendment is too massive to be considered a ‘slice’, it operates within the framework of the “salami tactic” of Tamar Hostovsky Brandes and Yaniv Roznai (2025), where modern backsliding relies on amendments that are “prima facie constitutional but illegitimate.” The bill fits this framework by using women’s reservation as a Trojan horse which is the core of autocratic legalism: using prima facie legal procedures to shield structural decay from judicial scrutiny. The true, unstated aim of the amendment lies: increasing the Lok Sabha to 850 seats while locking the Rajya Sabha at 250. This shifts the bicameral voting ratio to a devastating 3.3:1, dealing a quiet but permanent blow to federal veto powers and executing a sweeping consolidation of executive dominance.
Section II: Legislative Analysis
The bill sought to amend article81 article82, article170, article 330, article 332,article334A. It was introduced in Lok Sabha on April 16, 2026.[4]The purpose of the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, was to fast-track the 33% women’s reservation in Parliament and expand the total number of Lok Sabha seats from 543 to maximum of 850 seats with 815 allocated to States and 35 to Union Territories. This change will result in smaller constituencies, allowing Members of Parliament (MPs) to represent fewer people, which is intended to enhance governance and accountability.[5]
The De-freezing of the Demographic Status Quo (amendment to Art 81 & 170)
The Lok Sabha shall now have a maximum of 850 members. Up to 815 members will be voted by the public to represent the States and up to 35 members will be chosen to represent the Union Territories, using rules that Parliament will decide. For this specific law, “population” means any published census which Parliament decides to use by passing a law. This amendment deletes the requirement to wait for a new census before changing state assembly seats. It explicitly states that the Delimitation Commission will adjust the seats using whichever census Parliament chooses. And the “third proviso” which was the legal clause enforcing the freeze on changing state assembly seats until after the first census post-2026 has also been deleted.
The Uncoupling of Temporal Reallocation (Article 82)
The amendment systematically alters the core language of the constitution. The marginal heading, of the word “after each census”, shall be substituted with “of constituencies”. “Upon the completion of each census, the allocation of seats”, shall be substituted with “The allocation of seats”. “By such authority and in such manner”, shall be substituted with “in such manner and on the basis of such census, by the Delimitation Commission,” allowing boundaries to be altered on the basis of whichever census Parliament legally dictates.
The Statutory Conditionalities of Quotas (Articles 330, 332, & 334A)
Regardless of any other earlier rules of the constitution, the new women’s reservation will only come in action after delimitation. This applies specifically to the seats in the Lok Sabha, all State Legislative Assemblies, the Legislative Assembly of Delhi, the Legislative Assembly of Puducherry, and the Legislative Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir. These rules apply when state assembly and parliamentary seats are reshuffled or increased, and these reservations will stop being active exactly fifteen years after the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023 first becomes law. Unless the Parliament decides to pass a new law that explicitly extends the time limit for a longer period specified by them. The specific seats that are set aside for women will not stay the same forever; they shall be rotated and assigned to constituencies across each State or Union territory over time.[6]
The bill failed to meet the strict constitutional requirements under Article 368. With 528 members participating, the bill secured only 289 votes, falling short of the required threshold by 54 votes. The opposing position was to implement the reservation immediately, rather than linking it to a massive seat delimitation. By choosing to raise the total number of seats instead, the bill created concern regarding a widening North-South divide.
Under this proposed expansion, states like Tamil Nadu which successfully stabilized their demographics, would face a democratic penalty by losing relative representation. Although the government’s specific claim is that southern states would gain seats in absolute terms (increasing from 129 to 195 seats) and that their overall share of power in Parliament would remain roughly the same (broadly stable at 23.8%), structural anxieties over the redistribution of federal power remained.[7]
This tension between raw numbers and structural reality highlights the core critique of the bill. According to an article by The Wire, critics have argued that despite being framed as a measure to advance women’s political representation and agency, the Bill functioned primarily as a strategic instrument to facilitate delimitation and reconfigure electoral demographics.[8]This is evident in the amendment of Article 334A; by it the 33% women’s quota remains inactive until a fresh delimitation is completed, and concurrently deleting the Article 170 freeze, the bill ensured that gender equity could not legally exist without a total restructuring of the parliamentary map.
Section III: Critical Analysis and Argument
Deconstructing the Rhetoric: The Moral Shield and the Doordarshan Precedent
The operational mechanism of the 131st Amendment, specifically the conditionalities inserted into Article 334A, exposes where progressive reform transforms into autocratic legalism. As discussed above, the reservation quota can be taken as a moral shield to insulate a highly controversial structural change from public backlash. This can be affirmed by the Prime Minister’s address after the defeat of the bill, apologizing for the failure of the women’s reservation on national television. Although this was a landmark amendment which was defeated for the first time in 12 years, critics have argued the address felt more like a political speech violating the Model Code of Conduct.[9]
By presenting it as only a failure of women’s reservation, it encompasses the salami tactic of autocratic legalism, slicing away institutional legitimacy by using public broadcasting to substitute a complex constitutional defeat with a simplified moral failure, when it was not necessarily a failure of the quota itself. As proposed in the article The Defeat of the 131st Amendment Bill: Checks, Balances, and Delimitation, women’s reservation could be brought in by a simple Constitutional Amendment to change the 106th CAA before 2029, by delinking the quota from the delimitation exercise. This would allow the 33% reservation to be applied immediately to the current 543 seats, proving that the bill’s defeat was a rejection of a majoritarian structural grab, not a rejection of gender justice.[10]
“One Person, One vote “ and the Cartographic Assault
While the government defended the sudden delimitation on the democratic principle of “one person, one vote, one value,”[11]. The latest available data, the 2011 census, is already fifteen years old and demographically inaccurate for 2026.More importantly, under this expansion, the South’s relative share of parliamentary power drops from 24% to 21%, while the Northeast shrinks from 4.7% to 4.0%. The East and North see their relative representational power diluted, and Goa outright loses a seat, dropping from two to one. This stands in drastic contrast to the staggering 133-seat gain handed to the northern Hindi heartland, where the ruling party is most prominent. While the entire South gains just 44 seats in absolute terms, Uttar Pradesh alone gains more new seats (+58) than all five southern states combined. This mathematical asymmetry can bluntly be called an institutional power grab tailored for the elections to be held in early 2029.
This calculation is structurally supported by the text’s amendments to Articles 81 and 170, which granted Parliament the arbitrary authority to bypass standard freezes and deploy any published census data. Because the 2011 data was already fully processed, verified, and available, the Delimitation Commission could have been set up immediately in 2026 to begin redrawing constituency borders. The resulting three-year window from April 2026 to the date of implementation would give the Delimitation Commission ample time to complete public hearings and finalize the new boundaries. This precise timeline ensured that both the expanded 850 Lok Sabha seats and the 33% women’s reservation quota would be legally active and structurally weaponized just in time for the April/May 2029 general election. As commentator Varun Santhosh summarized during the legislative debate, the entire maneuver looked like a classic ploy: “If you can’t win the game, change the rule[12].
If it had not been defeated, this specific timeline would have shown the epitome of autocratic legalism, using a popular social reform to smoothly advance a majoritarian restructuring.
The Kesavananda Blindspot and the Judicial Trap
If the 131st Amendment had not been defeated, its implication would have placed the Supreme Court of India with a constitutional paradox, exposing the masterstroke of this act of autocratic legalism. Had the bill passed, any subsequent legal challenge brought before the judiciary would have been trapped in a difficult spot within the Basic Structure doctrine:
The Basic Structure Clash
The Supreme Court is constitutionally mandated under the Kesavananda Bharati precedent to protect “Federalism” as an unalterable core of the constitutional identity, balancing power between the centre and states, is considered a basic feature.[13]However, the text of the 131st Amendment immunizes its actions by wrapping itself in another foundational democratic feature: the principle of demographic equity, or “one person, one vote, one value” under Articles 82 and 170.
The Arbitrary Census Manipulation
In Royappa, the Supreme Court completely redefined Article 14, ruling that “Arbitrariness is the sworn enemy of equality.” The Court established that any state action or law that is malicious, biased, or lacks a rational, fair logic is a direct violation of Article 14.[14]
By amending Articles 81 and 170 to say that “population” means any published census which Parliament decides to use by passing a law, the bill completely removes the constitutional standard.
By letting a simple parliamentary majority pick any old census data out of convenience rather than a standard decadal pattern, the law introduces pure whim and political convenience into the constitution. Under Article 14, a law must have a clear, logical connection (rational nexus) to a legitimate democratic goal. Picking a 15-year-old, demographically inaccurate census (2011 data) to redraw borders in 2026 has no rational connection to giving citizens fair, modern democratic representation. It is done solely because that data is available and favours the ruling party.
In Indian constitutional law, a colorable exercise of power means doing something indirectly that you are legally forbidden from doing directly (the legal maxim is: “What cannot be done directly, cannot be done indirectly”).[15]
The constitution originally froze delimitation to protect federalism and prevent the punishment of southern states. The government cannot legally erase the South’s relative power by a simple law.
By using the universally accepted goal of a women’s quota (((Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023))) to disguise a clause that lets them pick an arbitrary census to reward the high-density North, the text reveals a hidden, partisan motive. The Supreme Court strikes down laws under Article 14 if the legal mechanism is a mere pretext used to execute an unequal, discriminatory power shift.
Conclusion
The definitive collapse of the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, on April 17 exposed the fragile nature of India’s constitutional checks and balances. The legislative analysis of the bill reveals a stark contrast between its progressive public rhetoric and its controversial mechanical reality of amending Articles 81, 82, and 170 to re-draw the demographic map. The bill struck at the roots of federalism: calling for the end of population based seat freeze early and allowed Parliament to use any arbitrary census baseline. This imposed a severe democratic penalty on southern states that managed to control their populations, while creating a massive majoritarian premium for the dense northern Hindi heartland. By inserting Article 334A to freeze the 33% women’s quota until after this sweeping redistricting was complete, the government set a zero-sum political wedge trap designed to force the opposition into choosing between gender equality and regional political survival.
And this framework confirms the central thesis of this article: the 131st Amendment represents a clear manifestation of autocratic legalism operating through salami-slicing tactics. Rather than attempting a revolutionary overthrow of the constitutional order, the ruling machinery deployed legitimate, prima facie legal amendment procedures under Article 368 to subtly hollow out federal protections and secure a permanent majoritarian electoral advantage ahead of the 2029 General Elections. Even though the bill ultimately failed to secure the mandatory two-thirds special majority in the Lok Sabha, the manoeuvre successfully shifted the psychological baseline of Indian politics, illustrating how modern democratic backsliding can advance incrementally through highly technical legislative means.
Legal frameworks should mandate non-partisan social quotas such as women’s legislative reservations must be insulated and decoupled from contentious structural or territorial reconfigurations like delimitation. Adjustments to constituency boundaries must remain tied to predictable, and standardized decadal census operations rather than granting a simple parliamentary majority the unchecked authority to choose arbitrary baselines. Preserving this institutional boundary is vital to ensuring that progressive social progress is never again utilized as a structural weapon to erode the federal fabric of the union.
Reference(S):
[1] Tarunabh Khaitan, ‘Killing a Constitution with a Thousand Cuts: Executive Aggrandizement and Party-State Fusion in India’ (SSRN Working Paper 3367266, 2019) ssrn.com accessed 3 June 2026;.Wojciech Sadurski, Poland’s Constitutional Breakdown (Oxford University Press 2019) doi.org accessed 3 June 2026
[2] Kim Lane Scheppele, ‘Autocratic Legalism’, The University of Chicago Law Review, 85/2 (2018), 545–583
[3] Tamar Hostovsky Brandes and Yaniv Roznai, ‘When the First Brick Falls of the Fortress of Democracy: Dealing with the First Slice of the “Salami Tactic” for Eroding Democracy’ (2025) Asian Journal of Comparative Law https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391184667_When_the_First_Brick_falls_of_the_Fortress_of_Democracy_Dealing_with_the_First_Slice_of_the_’Salami_Tactic’_for_Eroding_Democracy
[4] Supreme Court Observer, ‘Home Page’ <https://share.google/FehbKHs17kXy7fwOY>
[5] Delimitation in India: Lok Sabha Expansion, Women’s Reservation, and the Federal Debate’, VisionIAS, 2026, visionias.in
[6] India, Parliament, Lok Sabha, ‘The Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty-First Amendment) Bill, 2026’, Bill No. 107 of 2026, Supreme Court Observer, 2026, https://share.google/ba6rHnLw0M2ApDkZO.
[7] Vision IAS, ‘Constitution 131st Amendment Bill Defeated in Lok Sabha’, Vision IAS Blog, 2026, visionias.in
[8] Misbah Rashid, ‘Beyond Quotas: The Limits of Women’s Political Empowerment in India’, The Wire, 5 May 2026, https://m.thewire.in/article/women/beyond-quotas-the-limits-of-womens-political-empowerment-in-india
[9] Communist Party of India (Marxist), ‘Misuse of Public Broadcaster Doordarshan for Partisan Political Speech’, CPI(M) Official Website, 19 April 2026, https://cpim.org/misuse-of-public-broadcaster-doordarshan-for-partisan-political-speech
[10] Ajmal IAS Academy, ‘The Defeat of the 131st Amendment Bill: Checks, Balances, and Delimitation’, Ajmal IAS Academy Deep Insights, 2026, https://ajmaliasacademy.in/the-defeat-of-the-131st-amendment-bill-checks-balances-and-delimitation/
[11] Ajmal IAS Academy, ‘The Defeat of the 131st Amendment Bill: Checks, Balances, and Delimitation’, Ajmal IAS Academy Deep Insights, 2026, ajmaliasacademy.in
[12] Varun Santhosh, ‘The BJP’s Ploy: If You Can’t Win the Game, Change the Rules’, X, 15 April 2026, x.com
[13] Digital Reports’ (e-Courts Mission Mode Project) ecourts.gov.in ; Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, AIR 1973 SC 1461
[14] Aishwarya Agrawal, ‘Doctrine of Non-Arbitrariness’ (LawBhoomi, 19 August 2025) lawbhoomi.com; E.P. Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu, AIR 1974 SC 555
[15] Debjani Ojha, ‘Chromatic Jurisprudence: Navigating the Palette of Colourable Legislation in India’ (2024) 30 Pen Acclaims 1.
