New Delhi: A war of words over the implementation of women’s reservation has brought back into focus the disagreement between the government and the opposition over its linkage with delimitation, after Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju exchanged sharp posts on X on Saturday (August 8).The verbal exchange began after Gandhi said in a video posted by Congress party on its social media account that India could not fully develop if women were not able to express themselves freely.He went on to say that this freedom extended beyond women doing well “in business or politics” to being able to “walk the streets comfortably” and to question “their parents, husbands, brothers.” He said that “a certain amount of freedom from patriarchy and the rigid control men put on women is required if India wants to develop”.Rijiju responded to the video on X, calling it a sign of a “visible change of heart” in Gandhi and expressing hope that the Congress would now back the Women’s Reservation Bill “unconditionally.”Gandhi hit back the same day, pointing out that the Women’s Reservation Bill 2023 had already been passed unanimously by parliament with Congress support. “Mr Rijiju, who would know better than you, as the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, that the Women’s Reservation Bill 2023 has already been passed unanimously, with the full support of the Congress,” Gandhi wrote on X. “The question is why has it still not been implemented even after three years, and why do you now want to unnecessarily link it to delimitation? Implement the 2023 law. Without any conditions.”Rijiju replied that Gandhi knew “very well” that reservation of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies was provided for under the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023, and that it could come into effect only after a delimitation exercise based on census figures published after 2023, meaning figures published after 2026.Demand for an all party meetingThe exchange followed a series of conversations between Rijiju and Gandhi over the functioning of parliament. Rijiju had spoken to Gandhi on the phone on Thursday seeking opposition support for the women’s reservation and delimitation measures. Gandhi, according to people familiar with the conversation quoted by PTI, sought an all-party meeting on the proposed legislation instead.Speaking to reporters in the Parliament House complex on Thursday, Rijiju described the conversation with Gandhi as “productive” and said the government expected “continuous communication and coordinated action with the Congress and other opposition parties.”The government had introduced a set of constitutional and delimitation measures in April arguing that it would enable implementation of the women’s quota from the 2029 elections. However, the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, introduced for that purpose, failed to secure the required majority in the Lok Sabha on April 17.Congress has opposed the government’s attempt to combine the implementation of women’s reservation with the delimitation exercise, arguing that the latter raises a separate set of questions about the future allocation of Lok Sabha seats among states.‘Using women’s reservation as a ‘smokescreen’Congress media and publicity department chairman Pawan Khera reiterated that position in a response to Rijiju, accusing the government of using women’s reservation as a “smokescreen” for conducting delimitation on the basis of the 2011 Census.Khera argued that the government’s explanation amounted to saying that because the new census could not be completed in time, delimitation should instead be undertaken using what he described as “15-year-old obsolete data”. He also referred to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s April 2026 article in The Hindu, which had pointed to Bihar and Telangana completing caste surveys in less than six months.The BJP, meanwhile, has sought to portray Congress’s opposition to the delimitation proposal as inconsistent with its support for greater women’s representation.BJP IT department head Amit Malviya said Congress was “trampling” on greater representation for women while resisting what he described as proportional representation for states. He argued that the women’s quota law could not be considered separately from the constitutional framework governing the allocation of seats.Rijiju also sought to turn the argument towards Congress’s record in Karnataka, pointing out that there was no woman in Karnataka chief minister D.K. Shivakumar’s cabinet and saying this raised questions about the party’s commitment to the 33% quota.Shivakumar responded that Congress was committed to women’s representation and had been among the parties that had supported the women’s reservation legislation. “We are the ones who piloted” the bill and “we are the ones who passed” it, he told reporters.