“Women as a class neither belong to a minority group nor are they regarded as forming a backward class.” In the light of this statement, discuss the evolution of women’s reservation from local bodies to Parliament.

Introduction

The quoted proposition states a real constitutional puzzle. Reservation in India is ordinarily justified under Articles 15(4) and 16(4) for socially and educationally backward classes, and women as a category fit neither the minority nor the backward-class template. Women's reservation therefore rests on a different constitutional footing: Article 15(3), which permits the state to make special provision for women and children, read with the equality guarantee of Article 14 understood substantively.

Stage one: local bodies

• The 73rd and 74th Amendments (1992) reserved not less than one-third of seats and chairperson posts for women in panchayats (Article 243D) and municipalities (Article 243T).
• Over twenty states have since raised this to 50 per cent by state legislation, so more than 1.4 million elected women now serve in local government.
• The evidence base is substantial: studies of West Bengal and Rajasthan panchayats found reserved councils invested more in drinking water and roads, and the "pradhan-pati" proxy problem declined with repeated exposure to women leaders.

Stage two: the long failure at the national level

• The Women's Reservation Bill was introduced in 1996 and reintroduced in 1998, 1999 and 2008. It passed the Rajya Sabha in 2010 but lapsed with the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha.
• The recurring obstruction was the demand for a quota within the quota for OBC and minority women, which cut directly across the classification argument in the quoted statement.

Stage three: the 106th Amendment

• The Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, inserts Articles 330A, 332A and 334A.
• It reserves one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha, in state legislative assemblies and in the Delhi assembly, including one-third within the seats already reserved for SCs and STs.
• It does not extend to the Rajya Sabha or state legislative councils.
• Reservation operates for fifteen years and seats are to rotate after each delimitation.

The conditionalities

• Implementation is deferred until after a census and a subsequent delimitation exercise, so the amendment is enacted but not yet operative.
• No sub-quota for OBC women was included, leaving the 1996 dispute formally unresolved.
• Rotation of reserved seats risks weakening constituency-level accountability, a criticism also made of the panchayat experience.

Conclusion

The evolution runs from an immediately operative one-third at the local tier to a constitutionally guaranteed but conditional one-third at the national tier, over three decades. The quoted statement explains why the route had to be Article 15(3) rather than backwardness, and it also explains the unresolved fight: once the quota is not grounded in backwardness, the demand for a backwardness-based sub-quota inside it has no obvious constitutional answer. Detail is in our note on the Women's Reservation Bill.