The Centre is likely to convene a special session of Parliament later this month, with a constitutional amendment related to delimitation and the Women’s Reservation Bill on the agenda, according to a BusinessToday report of 16 October 2026 that cites India Today. The report is based on unnamed government sources and no date has been announced.
The timing is hinted at by another event. The session is expected before the 12th BRICS Parliamentary Forum at Samvidhan Sadan on 26 and 27 October, according to the report, and one week’s notice is expected before Parliament is convened. If the session is to be held before the forum, the notice would have to be issued within days, an inference by IndiaX24 from the two statements.
The arithmetic is the central issue. The report puts the Lok Sabha’s strength at 540 members and says a constitutional amendment needs about 360 votes, which is two-thirds of 540. The sources told India Today that ‘the Centre has the numbers required’ and is ‘confident of its strength in the House’, according to the report. IndiaX24 has not verified the figure of 540 members, which differs from the commonly cited 543 elected seats, and reports it as given.
Recent changes in the House are said to help the government. The report says that 20 Trinamool Congress MPs and six Shiv Sena (UBT) MPs have switched to the ruling side, which is 26 members in total, a sum by IndiaX24. The reports reviewed do not give the sources for those defections or say whether the MPs have formally changed parties, so the claim is reported as the sources’ account.
The government has a setback to recall. An amendment bill on the subject was defeated in the Lok Sabha during the Budget Session, on 17 April, according to the report. That defeat is the reason that the count of votes is being stressed this time. IndiaX24 has reported in earlier articles on the subject of the Lok Sabha at 850 seats, delimitation and women’s reservation, and this article adds only the new information on timing and numbers.
The Centre is also reaching out to other parties. It is in talks with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which split from the Congress after the Tamil Nadu elections and left the INDIA bloc, and it is contacting smaller opposition parties, according to the report. The DMK’s position is not reported, and a party’s participation in talks does not indicate how it will vote.
The opposition is at odds with the government on other fronts. Protests have intensified over the revision of electoral rolls and over concerns about Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, according to the report. IndiaX24 has reported that the Election Commission announced a special summary revision in 17 states and union territories this week and that the Supreme Court has issued notice on petitions over the revision.
A special session would be a break from the normal calendar. Parliament’s winter session usually begins in late November or December, which is general background, so a session in October would be unusual, and the reports reviewed do not say how long it would last.
The details of the bills matter for how the numbers are counted. The report does not describe the text of the constitutional amendment or the Women’s Reservation Bill, or the number of seats that delimitation would add, so IndiaX24 cannot say how states would gain or lose representation. Southern states have raised concerns about delimitation in the past, which is general background and is not part of this report.
All of this rests on anonymous sources, and governments often signal confidence before a vote. IndiaX24 will report when the session is formally summoned.
Image: The new Parliament building in New Delhi (file photo). Photo by Narendra Modi, licensed under CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.