NEW DELHI — The Union government on Tuesday shared draft legislation with Members of Parliament proposing to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha from 543 to 850 seats, a plan officials described as the most straightforward method of implementing the Women's Reservation Act that also, as a structural feature of the design, requires no existing male parliamentarian to vacate his constituency.

The bills, which Parliament will take up during a special three-day session beginning April 16, would add 307 seats to the lower house — all of them new, none of them previously occupied. The 543 seats currently held by members, of whom approximately 86% are men, will remain in place.

"This is the cleanest possible implementation," said a government official who declined to be named, explaining the logic of adding an entirely new category of seats rather than redistributing existing ones. "The women get their seats. The men keep their seats. Everyone gets seats."

The approach represents an evolution from the government's earlier proposals. In March, Home Minister Amit Shah had discussed a figure of 816 seats with select opposition leaders. By April 1, the figure in circulation was still 816. By April 14, when draft copies reached MPs for the first time, the number had settled at 850. Officials said the methodology for arriving at 850 would be explained during the session.

The 2023 Women's Reservation Act, which passed the Lok Sabha by 454 votes to 2 and was described at the time as a historic moment for Indian democracy, had included a provision that women's reservation would take effect only after a census and delimitation exercise. The government, which inserted that provision, said on Tuesday that waiting for those conditions to be met would "take considerable time and thus delay the effective and dedicated participation of women in our democratic polity" — a concern it did not raise during the drafting of the 2023 Act.

The delimitation exercise will instead be based on the 2011 Census, a decision that also means the results of the ongoing caste enumeration, which began April 1, will not be factored into constituency boundaries. Delimitation Commission decisions, officials noted, cannot be challenged in the Supreme Court.

Opposition parties noted that under the 816-seat model discussed in March — before the figure grew to 850 — northern states would gain approximately 200 additional seats while southern states would gain 66. Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh calculated that Uttar Pradesh's representation would grow from 80 to 120 seats while Tamil Nadu would increase from 39 to at most 59, widening the gap between the two states from 41 seats to at least 61. The government said all states would benefit from the increase.

Prime Minister Modi announced the outlines of the plan at a Kerala election rally on April 4, nineteen days before Kerala votes. Tamil Nadu votes on April 23; West Bengal votes on April 23 and April 29. The special parliamentary session runs April 16-18.

"Parliament currently meets for 55 to 65 days a year," noted an academic paper published this month in Frontline, which observed that the largest lower house in the world — the UK's House of Commons — has 650 members, and that a body of 850 would require a commensurate increase in sitting days to function as a legislature rather than, in the paper's phrasing, "a political rally." The government's proposal does not address parliamentary sitting days.

The women's reservation, officials confirmed, will be effective from March 31, 2029.