The Editorial Page: A political setback for government, a democratic opening for Opposition 8 SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 2026 JOURNALISM of COURAGE KOLKATA, LATE CITy, 18 PAGES ₹6.00 (₹12 in North East states, ₹20 in Andaman) l www.indianexpress.com DA I Ly f R O M : A H M E DA B A D , C H A N D I GA R H , D E L H I , j A I P U R , KO L K ATA , L U C K N O W , M U M B A I , N AG P U R , PAT N A , P U N E , vA D O DA R A FIRST MAJOR LEgISLATIVE DEFEAT FOR MODI gOVT SINCE 2014; RELATED BILLS DROPPED MODI, SHAH WARN OPPOSITION IT WILL FACE WOMEN’S IRE IF RESERVATION DENIED gOVT’S REAL DESIgN WAS TO CHANgE ELECTORAL MAP OF COUNTRY, SAYS OPP Opposition stands, women’s Bill falls Opp:Hailthe Constitution, BJP’sdeceitful Will work with Tehran to recover chariotstopped enriched uranium: US President 298-230 voting score in House well short of required two-thirds majority Vikas Pathak & Deeptiman Tiwary New Delhi, April 17 IN THE first major legislative loss for the Modi government since it came to power in 2014, the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, seeking to advance reservation of seats for women in an expanded Lok Sabha and state Assemblies and facilitate delimitation of constituencies,wasdefeatedin Lok Sabha Friday evening. Ofthe528memberspresent in the House, 298 voted in favour of the Bill and 230 opposed it, the result well short of thetwo-thirdsmajorityneeded for a Constitutional amendment Bill to clear the House. The amended women’s quota Bill – the 2023 women’s ThE EDITOrIAl PAGE IN PArLIAmENt PUShbAck, LESSoN for govt PAgE 8 Asad Rehman New Delhi, April 17 PArlIAmENT hIgh drAmA, qUIEt cErtAINty — ANd A fALL PAgE 7 reservation law still stands – was put to vote after a marathon two-day debate during which Prime Minister NarendraModiandHomeMinister Amit Shah urged members to support the proposed legislation, and cautioned the »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 happening today lPRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi will speak at a “grand gathering” in Coimbatore. lLEADER OF Opposition Rahul Gandhi will launch election campaign in Chennai. TRACK THESE AND MORE ON www.INDIANExPrEss.cOm Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and other ministers during the special sitting of Parliament, Friday. ANI Close to vote, Govt realised Bill would fall, put the onus on Opp Deeptiman Tiwary & Liz Mathew New Delhi, April 17 HOURS BEFORE the Constitutional amendment Bill providing for women’s reservation and delimitation was put to vote in the Lok Sabha, it was pretty much clear to the government it did not have the support of enough MPs in the House for the required two-thirds majority of those present. But BJP leaders and sources in the government told The Indian Express they would not withdraw the Bill at this point; they would rather have it fall at the hands of the Opposition. Inalastditchattempttosalvage the Bill, the ruling party did make attempts to reach out to the Akhilesh Yadavled Samajwadi Party and some other Opposition parties during the day. They seemed to think sections within the Opposition would support the Bill when it is brought to vote, worried about facing questions during elections. business as Usual By EP UNNY E. Rahul’s citizenship: Outside Joka SIR tribunal, a tale of Allahabad High Court logistical, administrative hurdles allows plea for probe Sweety Kumari Express News Service FOR27-year-oldShabnamMondal, a resident of Bardhaman’s Kalna, the struggle to reclaim her voting rights has become a personalordealfraughtwithresponsibility, distance and uncertainty. She left her five-yearold child back at home with grandparentstoundertakeasixhour journey to the Joka tribunal on Friday, only to find herself stranded outside the SPM-NIWAS entrance, unable to even step inside. “I have submitted everything, Voter ID, Passport, PAN card, birth and schoolcertificates,yetmyname was deleted from the voter rolls,” Mondal said. Despite her grandfather’s name being there on the 2002 electoral rolls, Mondal alleged that her name was removed simply because too many relatives (more than seven) cited the same person as relation. “My passport has an Indore address because we moved for work. But does that THE ALLAHABAD High Court on Friday allowed a petition by a Karnataka-based BJP member,VigneshShishir,seekingaprobeintoallegationsthat Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also holds a British citizenship. Justice Subhash Vidyarthi set aside an order of a Lucknow trial court in January, which declined to entertain the petitioner’s plea. The complete order of the High Court is yet to be made public. The trial court had earlier said that under legislation and citizenship rules, it had “no jurisdiction to adjudicate the question relating to the citizenship or nationality of anyone" while ruling that "the present applicationisnotmaintainable and liable to be rejected”. The petitioner had alleged that Gandhi holds a dual citizenship and has allegedly “forged and manipulated multiple passports, concealed bytheIndiangovernment”.The Kolkata, April 17 New Delhi, April 17 Security personnel outside the tribunal in Joka on Friday. EXPRESS travelled long distances, alleged that heavy security measures prevented them from entering the premises. In a recent order, the Supreme Court invoked its powers under Article 142 of the Constitution, allowing voters cleared by Appellate Tribunals tovoteintheupcomingAssemblyelections,providedtheirappeals are decided before April 21 and 27, respectively, for the first and second phases. »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 AFTERTHEConstitution(One Hundred and Thirty-First Amendment) Bill, 2026, failed to get the Lok Sabha’s approval Friday, the Opposition hailed it as “historic” and emphasised it was not against women’s reservation. In his first reaction after the Bill failed to make its way through the Lower House, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi posted on X, “The amendmentbillhasfallen.They usedanunconstitutionaltrickin thenameofwomentobreakthe Constitution. India has seen it. INDIA(bloc)hasstoppedit.Hail the Constitution.” Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin said the state had “defeated Delhi”. “On April 23 (elections), we will defeat Delhi’s arrogance — andtheslaveswhosupportthat arrogance — together,” Stalin wrote on X alongside a portrait of him setting fire to a copy of the Delimitation Bill. In another post, he said, “The south stood united and made its voice heard. Democracy prevailed. We never opposed delimitation. We asked for fairness, for a process that is »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 AFTER SC DIRECTIVE FOR BENgAL mean I lose my roots? Do they expectapersonborninKolkata to never move until they die?” she said. DespiteaSupremeCourtdirective meant to reinstate the voting rights of lakhs of voters deleted from the rolls under SpecialIntensiveRevision(SIR) exercise in West Bengal, the ground reality at the Appellate Tribunal in Joka remains one of logistical and administrative hurdles. Many petitioners and lawyers, some of whom As Iran opens Strait of Hormuz, Trump says blockade to stay until deal is reached petition included documents, including a purported British government reply under the DataProtectionAct,2018,refusing to provide unauthorised public information on citizenship. Thepetitionerallegedthat therefusaltorespondtoaquery “is nothing lesser than outright admission of the Home Office, Govt.ofU.K.thatRahulGandhi is a citizen of Britain because rules, regulations and act enacted by U.K. Govt. will be only applicable to the citizen of U.K. and Britain, not to any Indian Citizen at all”. In July 2025, a different bench of the Allahabad High Court had dismissed a similar plea by the petitioner, with libertytoapproachthecompetent authorityundertheCitizenship Act, 1955. In 2019, a Supreme Court bench headed by then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi had dismissed a petition seekingdirectionstotheCentre andEC tobarGandhifromcontesting the Lok Sabha elections till allegations over his citizenship were resolved. People return home following a ceasefire, in Lebanon. REUTERS Humeyra Pamuk, Saad Sayeed & Aziz Taher Washington, Islamabad, Paris, April 17 IRANIAN FOREIGN Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifthoftheworld’soilandliquefiednaturalgasusuallytransits, was open for all commercial vessels following the agreement of a ceasefire in Lebanon, while US President Donald Trump said he believed a deal toendtheIranwarwouldcome “soon”, although the timing remains unclear. InapostonX,Araghchisaid theStrait,whichwaseffectively closed, was open for the re- wOrlD PAgE 10 mAcroN ANd StArmEr SEEk NAvIgAtIoN SEcUrIty mainderoftheUS-brokered10daytrucebetweenIsraeliforces and Iran-backed Hezbollah agreed Thursday between Israel and Lebanon. Trump told Reuters Friday that the US will work with Iran torecoveritsenricheduranium and bring it back to the US as partofanydeal.“We’regoingto »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 SC/ST Act added to rape FIR that triggered arrests in TCS Nashik case Help of Central agencies is also being sought, where necessary, to get to the root of the matter, says Fadnavis Zeeshan Shaikh & Mohamed Thaver Mumbai, April 17 THE NASHIK Police have added another charge to the firstFIRthattriggeredarrestsin the TCS Nashik case. FIR 156, which was filed against Danish Sheikh on charges of rape, sexual harassment and hurting religious sentiments on March 26, was expanded on March 31 to include sections of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities)Act,1989.Policesaid thisisbecausethecomplainant woman is a member of the SC community. On Friday, speaking to the media in Kolkata, Maharashtra ChiefMinisterDevendraFadnavis said, “The Nashik TCS inci- dentthatcametolightwasaserious matter. It is a module that is beingstrictlyprobedtoascertain itsdeep-rootedlinks.Helpisalso being sought from central agencies,wherenecessary,toget to the root of the case. TCS has taken serious cognisance and strongly condemned the incident. They are cooperating and taking necessary measures.” All the accused, except TCS employee Nida Khan, have been arrested. Her lawyer, Baba Sayyad, told TheIndianExpressthat he would soon file an anticipatory bail application on her behalf, addingthatshewas“avictimof media trial”. He claimed Khan is pregnant and her family is concerned about the impact of the case on her health. On her alleged role, Nashik Police Commissioner Sandeep Karniksaid,"Sofar,herrolehas not emerged in any other FIR. She was an associate and not in HR at the company. In our probe,nolinkhasbeenfoundto the accused (Nida) in any case registered across the country.” Healsosaidpolicehavewritten to central agencies to check claimsthatsomeoftheaccused are linked to banned groups. An analysis of all nine FIRs in the case shows that eight carry charges of sexual harassment, five include charges of hurting religious sentiments, and at least three document instances where complainants claimtheyraisedconcernsinternallybeforeapproachingthepolice. »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 l ISSUE DOESN’T SEEM TO HAvE BECOME A MAJOR TALKING POINT AMONG PEOPLE AMID POLLS Delimitation row fuels DMK’s final push against ADMK, Vijay in race against time Manoj C g Karur, Dindigul, Tenkasi, April 17 A WEEK is a long time in politics.AndinTamilNadu,the incumbentDMK,inthethickof itscampaignfortheApril23Assembly elections which may havethrownupvariousimponderables,haslessthanaweekto ignitethedelimitationrowinto a full-blown poll issue. The row does not seem to have become a major talking point among people so far on thepollevedespiteTamilNadu Chief Minister and DMK presidentMKStalin’stoughtalkand call for street protests. But Tamil Nadu’s political landscape is unique in many ways.Itwasthefirststatetoembrace regional forces when it voted out the Congress way DECISION 2026 TA M I L N A D U morE rEP0rtS, PAgE 5 back in 1967, when the latter had absolute political domination across the country. Governed by the two leading Dravidian parties alternatively for about six decades, the state's natural impulse is to view moves by the Central government with suspicion. This despite the fact that the Dravidian majors have shared power at the Centre in the past as part of different coalitions, both with the Congress and the BJP. Identity politics can never DMK president and Chief Minister M K Stalin sets fire to a copy of the Delimitation Bill, at Namakkal in western Tamil Nadu. @MKSTALIN be divorced from Tamil Nadu politics,withboththeDMKand its rival AIADMK always keen to champion Tamil pride. Latching on to the BJP-led Centre's delimitation proposal, Stalin has been trying to campaign on the issue for some time, framing it as an “injustice” to Tamil Nadu and the neighbouring southern states. “The DMK has stood for more powers to the state. But we find that is being consistently eroded... the way this is being altered now. Even though on Thursday, PM Modi has assured that there will not be any change in the proportion of states in the Lok Sabha after delimitation, we have to see how exactly it's being done, why there is no transparency. So, in that sense, it is another opportunity for DMK to show that it is the representative of theinterestoftheSouthagainst a majoritarian North,” says noted Tamil historian and academic A R Venkatachalapathy. But as the poll campaign reaches a crescendo, the conversations on the ground mainly revolve around the impactfilmstar-turned-politician Vijay’s TVK would have on the elections besides various local factors including caste. “Next few days, we have to wait and see.It'sjusttwodaysonly(since the Centre brought a delimitation legislation), let us see. I thinkithasgreatimplications,” Venkatachalapathy says. “Ithinkthetimingofthedelimitationmoveisgoingtohelp DMK.Becausethey(Centre)are doing it in a rushed manner. It isnottransparentatall.Andthe Election Commission is not Kolkata doinganything.Amajorkindof legislativepieceisbeingmoved during the elections. This is all unprecedented. The impression we get is that delimitation might become an important issue,” he adds. The DMK seems to be acutelyawareofpossibleshiftof a section of its Dalit and young voterstotheTVK–theAIADMK is equally worried – and is keen torakeupthedelimitationissue to attract sections which are favourabletotheAIADMKbutare upset with its alliance with the BJP.Thesesentimentscouldbe heard not just from minorities but among other communities too. The DMK has a history of beingacriticofallcentralisation attempts, fiercely opposed to linguistic and cultural homogenisation.Ithasbeenastaunch votary of “true federalism” and enhanced autonomy for states. Thedelimitationrowfuelssuch a DMK campaign, and that too ontheeveoftheelections.With theAIADMKbeingalignedwith the BJP, the DMK believes it solely occupies the anti-Centre space in the state. “In any case, the AIADMK is not articulating any ideological position,” Venkatachalapathy says. However, the issue is complex and not easily explainable to common voters, unlike the controversy over NEET, devolution of the central funds or Hindi “imposition”. It is being talked about mainly by the DMKsupporters.Alargechunk of youth voters, who are enthusiastic about Vijay, are not lookingatsuchissuesastheybelieve in his narrative of change. »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2