The Telugu Desam Party has announced a 33 per cent quota for women in the 2029 general elections for the state assembly and Lok Sabha. Nara Lokesh, working president of the party and Andhra Pradesh IT and education minister, proposed the reservation on the first day of the party’s annual conference, Mahanadu 2026, themed “Stree Shakti”. A media release issued by the TDP on May 27 said the decision was taken amid ongoing delays in the implementation of the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament. The move is aimed at improving women’s representation in politics and giving impetus to the implementation of the national law.
Addressing the party conference, Lokesh said the next phase of Indian politics should focus on women’s leadership and that the TDP would lead the effort from the front. He noted that the NDA government had introduced the Women’s Reservation Bill and emphasised that women should move beyond being beneficiaries of welfare schemes to becoming active participants in decision-making. According to Lokesh’s proposal, the party will allocate 33 per cent of seats to women candidates in the 2029 elections, describing it as a commitment to building a more inclusive political future. The party recently appointed its MP, Byreddy Shabari, as its first woman national general secretary, indicating a push for greater roles for women in its organisational structure.
In the 2024 Andhra Pradesh assembly elections, the Telugu Desam Party fielded 17 women candidates out of the 144 seats it contested as part of the NDA alliance, accounting for about 11.8 per cent of its nominees. For the Lok Sabha elections, the party gave tickets to two women candidates out of the 17 Parliament seats it contested, again around 11.8 per cent. Against this backdrop, the party’s newly announced commitment to allot 33 per cent of tickets to women in the 2029 assembly and Lok Sabha elections would mark a nearly threefold increase in women’s representation in its candidate selection process.
With this announcement, the TDP has joined a small group of political parties that have voluntarily committed a significant share of tickets to women candidates. While several parties have supported the women’s reservation law at the national level, only a few have implemented such measures within their own party structures. In 2019, the Biju Janata Dal became the first party to allot 33 per cent of its Lok Sabha tickets to women, while the Trinamool Congress has consistently fielded one of the highest proportions of women candidates, touching nearly 40 per cent in some elections.
Women currently account for only about 13.6 per cent of the Lok Sabha, while their representation in state assemblies averages around 9 per cent nationally. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, women constituted only about 9.5 per cent of total candidates. Though Parliament passed the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023, providing 33 per cent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies, its implementation has been linked to the Census and delimitation exercises, delaying its rollout.
