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Three Bills tabled for the special session of Parliament amount to the most consequential rewriting of India’s electoral architecture in 50 years. The Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty-first Amendment) Bill, 2026, lifts the freeze on the size of the Lok Sabha. The Delimitation Bill, 2026, builds the machinery to redraw constituencies. A third Bill aligns the laws of Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir with the new scheme.

If the package is passed in its present form, a challenge in the Supreme Court is near certain. On what grounds, and which of them carry a real prospect of success? Three stand out. They are best read in sequence, rising from the narrowest doctrinal point to the broadest.

The textual dispute that could decide everything

The strongest ground is also the most technical. It rests on a single proviso to Article 368, which lays down how the Constitution may be amended. For most amendments, a two-thirds majority in each House is enough.

For a narrow set of amendments, more is required. The legislatures of at least half the states must ratify the amendment before presidential assent. This category includes any amendment that makes a change in “the representation of States in Parliament”.

The textual question is whether the 131st Amendment falls within that narrow set. Two readings contend.

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The first reading treats the phrase as confined to the Rajya Sabha. PRS Legislative Research articulated this view during the long debate on the 108th Amendment Bill between 2008 and 2010. On this view, “representation of States in Parliament” refers to the fixed allocation of Council of States seats under the Fourth Schedule. This is the only House in which state representation is constitutionally protected against population-based change. The Lok Sabha has always been population-based. Changes to its seat distribution among states have historically never been treated as attracting the proviso. Reading the proviso more broadly would make every past delimitation retrospectively vulnerable to challenge for want of ratification, which no Court has ever suggested.

The second reading gives the phrase its natural breadth. “Parliament” includes both Houses. A redistribution of Lok Sabha seats that moves share from Tamil Nadu to Uttar Pradesh is a change in the representation of states in Parliament. So is a redistribution that moves share from Kerala to Bihar. The Constitution Bench in Kihoto Hollohan v Zachillhu (1992) supplied the analytical tool. The test is whether the amendment, “in terms and in effect”, changes a provision the proviso covers. On this reading, the earlier freeze on seat allocation is precisely what prevented the proviso from being triggered in the past. The 131st Amendment lifts that freeze and actively redistributes.

The Court has not squarely decided between these readings. The 131st Amendment supplies the occasion. If the Court accepts the narrow reading, the Amendment passes muster so long as the special majority is obtained in each House. If it accepts the broader reading, ratification by at least half the state legislatures becomes a constitutional precondition. Whether the government seeks that ratification during the present session, or proceeds without it, the textual question will reach the Court either way.

This is the ground the Union will least want to see decided against it. The dispute does not require the Court to enter the politically charged terrain of basic structure. It turns on the meaning of five words. A finding for the broader reading would bind every future redistribution of Lok Sabha seats, not only this one.

Federalism as a basic structure

The larger, more familiar argument is that the amendment violates federalism. The Supreme Court has long held federalism to be part of the basic structure. Basic structure, laid down in Kesavananda Bharati (1973) and reaffirmed repeatedly since, treats certain features as beyond Parliament’s power to amend.

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The petitioner’s case may run as follows. The freeze on Lok Sabha seat allocation, imposed in 1976 and extended in 2001, was not a temporary administrative measure. It was a federal compact. States that pursued population stabilisation, principally in the South, especially Kerala, were promised protected representation in exchange. Unfreezing now breaks the compact unilaterally.

The Union’s response will be that representation by population is itself a basic feature of democracy. Perpetual departure from it, in this view, is the real constitutional anomaly. The Court will then face a choice between two basic-structure values: federalism and the equal weight of vote. It has not had to make this choice before.

Whether the federalism ground yields a strike-down depends on the composition of the Bench. It depends, too, on the Court’s appetite for a confrontation of Kesavananda scale. The argument will likely produce observations the Union will find difficult to live with in later litigation, without producing a strike-down on its own.

The bar and the qualification

Any challenge to delimitation has to confront Article 329(a) of the Constitution. The provision says that the validity of any law relating to the delimitation of constituencies shall not be called in question in any court. For decades, this was treated as a near-absolute bar. The Constitution Bench in Meghraj Kothari v Delimitation Commission (1966) settled the question, and no larger Bench has revisited it since.

The position has been qualified. Kishorchandra Chhanganlal Rathod v Union of India (2024) marks the shift. A two-judge Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan held that the bar is not absolute. The Court may review a delimitation order that is “manifestly arbitrary and irreconcilable to constitutional values”.

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The Union will argue that Kishorchandra is a short order of a two-judge Bench, not a Constitution Bench ruling, and cannot displace Meghraj Kothari. The petitioner will counter that Kishorchandra has been consistently read since to open a window of review for manifestly arbitrary action. The question will eventually require a larger Bench to settle.

Two points hold regardless. The 131st Amendment is a constitutional amendment, not a delimitation law. Article 329(a) does not shield it at all. Section 10(2) of the Delimitation Bill carries forward the statutory no-challenge bar. It would face an independent challenge for inconsistency with the broader principle in L Chandra Kumar (1997). That case treats judicial review as part of the basic structure.

Who will file, and when

The petitioner best placed to carry these grounds is a state government, not an individual. A state has the standing, the resources, and the political legitimacy to argue federalism in its own name. The election calendar, however, complicates the immediate arithmetic. Kerala voted on April 9. Tamil Nadu votes on April 23. Results in both states are due on May 4. Until then, no coordinated southern petition can realistically be filed.

Karnataka under Siddaramaiah is the state with a settled legislative majority and no polling date in the next fortnight. A Karnataka-led petition is, therefore, the most plausible immediate filing. If the Kerala and Tamil Nadu results return the incumbents, a coordinated three-state petition by early May becomes possible. If the results turn, the political logic of the challenge itself may alter.

Timing matters beyond the immediate. A petition filed before the Delimitation Commission begins its work will be premature on operational grounds, though ripe on the constitutional-amendment grounds. A petition filed after the Commission publishes draft proposals will be ripe on both. It will, however, face the argument that elections are imminent and the older Article 329(a) bar applies. The window between presidential assent and the Commission’s first publication is the procedural sweet spot.

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The honest assessment is this. The textual dispute under Article 368 is the most likely to yield a workable outcome, precisely because it avoids the politically freighted terrain. In whichever manner the Court resolves it, the answer will bind every future delimitation. The federalism ground will be argued at length and may produce observations useful in later litigation. A strike-down on that ground alone would need a Bench prepared for a major confrontation.

The package is, in scale and ambition, the most consequential constitutional rewriting in decades. It is comparable only to the 99th Amendment on the National Judicial Appointments Commission. That one was struck down in 2015 on basic structure grounds. Whether the present Court will show the same appetite is the deeper question beneath all the grounds. There are several grounds. The forum is one. The judgment, when it comes, will shape the constitutional terrain for a generation.