The Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023 is a constitutional amendment act, popularly known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam. It was enacted to address the long-standing problem of low female representation in India's legislative bodies, a debate that had been ongoing for 27 years since the bill was first introduced in 1996. The Act received Presidential assent on September 28, 2023, and was notified by the Ministry of Law and Justice on the same day.
The Act's core mechanism is the reservation of, as nearly as may be, one-third of the total seats for women in the Lok Sabha, the State Legislative Assemblies, and the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. This is achieved by inserting three new articles into the Constitution: Article 330A reserves seats for women in the Lok Sabha; Article 332A does the same for State Legislative Assemblies; and an amendment to Article 239AA extends the framework to the Delhi Assembly. Crucially, the Act includes a sub-reservation, mandating that one-third of the seats already reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) must be reserved for women from those respective categories.
The implementation of the reservation is governed by the newly inserted Article 334A, which acts as a "sunset clause" and a trigger mechanism. The reservation will only come into effect after a delimitation exercise is undertaken based on the figures of the first census published after the Act's commencement. Once implemented, the reservation will last for a period of fifteen years, though Parliament retains the power to extend it by law. The reserved seats are also mandated to be rotated after every subsequent delimitation exercise. The Act does not provide for reservation in the Rajya Sabha or State Legislative Councils.