New Delhi: Opposition members of the INDIA alliance have signed a letter written by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to union minister for parliamentary affairs Kiren Rijiju seeking an all-party meeting to be convened to discuss the implementation of the Women’s Reservation Act, The Wire has learnt. In the letter, opposition parties have reiterated their demand for the all-party meeting to be held after the upcoming assembly elections, to discuss proposed amendments to the Act, and said that “to make the meeting more productive, it is necessary for the Government to circulate a note detailing what exactly is being proposed.”The letter by Kharge, who is also the leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha, has been signed by members of the opposition including from the Samajwadi Party, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar), Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, and Jammu and Kashmir National Conference. The Trinamool Congress is notably not one of the signatories. The Wire has learnt that a meeting of opposition parties was held on the evening of March 23 to discuss the feelers sent out by the government to opposition parties, following which the letter was penned on Tuesday morning.The letter comes as the government has been reaching out to opposition parties to build consensus to bring an amendment to the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Amendment) Act, 2023 to delink it from the delimitation exercise. The Act passed unanimously by parliament in 2023 seeks to provide 33% reservation to women in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies. The letter states that Kharge had earlier written to Rijiju on March 16, requesting for an all-party meeting chaired by the prime minister at the earliest to discuss as desired by the government the “modalities and roadmap for the implementation of the Nari Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023.”“It appears that the Government is now planning a further Amendment to the Constitution Amendment passed in September 2023,” the letter says.“To make the meeting more productive, it is necessary for the government to circulate a note detailing what exactly is being proposed. The all-party meeting should be held after the current round of assembly elections is completed on April 29.”The letter comes a week after Kharge on March 16, wrote to Rijiju and said that while the government is seeking an interaction to discuss the modalities for the implementation of the constitutional amendment, the party’s view is that an all-party meeting should be convened where it can be discussed with all opposition parties together.The government’s moves to reach out to parties come as the 2023 legislation ties women’s reservation to a fresh census and delimitation exercise. It provides that the “provisions relating to the reservation of seats for women … shall come into effect after an exercise of delimitation is undertaken for this purpose after the relevant figures for the first census taken after [the Bill is passed] have been published.”The process for the census 2027 is currently underway, with the first phase of the Census scheduled to begin on April 1 and continue until September 30. The Economic Times has reported that the government plans to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha and state assemblies based on the 2011 census. The report said that the government is planning to bring two new amendments – to amend the Women’s Reservation Act and Delimitation Commission Bill this week.