Indian government launched a bid to overhaul its democratic system on Thursday, with bills to increase the size of parliament and bring forward plans to reserve a third of seats for women — though the opposition dismissed it as an attempt to manipulate elections.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the lower house of parliament the proposals — which would also increase the number of legislators and women in regional assemblies and redraw constituencies — would move India in a “new direction”.

“I believe that (women’s) voice in this house will bring new strength, fresh thinking, and a greater sense of sensitivity,” he said.

The government said the alterations to boundaries reflected population changes since seats were last fixed after a 1971 census.

Opposition says boundaries move unconstitutional 

Modi’s National Democratic Alliance government does not have the two-thirds majority it needs to get the measures through both houses of parliament and is hoping to convince some smaller parties and opposition groups to back the bills.

Larger opposition groups said they supported quotas for women, but accused the government of seeking to manipulate the system to get more votes, and said they would oppose the changes when parliament votes on them this week.

“The government should simplify women’s reservation so that it comes into effect immediately upon the passage of the law,” the Congress party, which leads the main opposition alliance, said in a post on X.

The bills would increase the number of lawmakers in the lower house of parliament by around 55% to 850 — and make similar increases to state legislatures — by the time of the next parliamentary elections due in 2029.

The bills would reserve one-third of seats for women in the expanded assemblies by the same date. The one-third share was agreed in legislation passed in 2023, but that was linked to the next census which would take the changes beyond the next election.

The changes also need to be ratified by at least half the state legislatures before they can become law.

India’s parliament currently does not reserve any seats for women, who make up nearly half of its 968 million voters but constitute only 14% of the lawmakers in the lower house and 17% in the upper house.

About 10% of the lawmakers in the country’s state legislatures are women.

Fourteen-year-old Fadel al-Naji used to be a keen footballer but is now largely confined to his home in Gaza City since both legs were severed in an Israeli drone attack in September.

He sits sullenly on a couch with one hollow pant leg dangling and the other tucked into his waist beside his 11-year-old brother who lost an eye in the same strike.

“He has become withdrawn and isolated,” said his mother Najwa al-Naji, showing old videos of him doing kick-ups on her phone. “It is as if he is dying slowly, and I wish that they would fit him with prosthetic limbs.”

But those are in scarce supply for Gaza’s nearly 5,000 war amputees – a quarter of whom are children like al-Naji – because of Israeli restrictions on materials like plaster of Paris, seven aid and medical sources told Reuters.

Israel, which fought a two-year war with Hamas fighters in the Palestinian enclave, cites security concerns as the reason for restrictions.

Taken together with Gaza’s pre-war amputee population provided by Palestinian health officials, its per capita amputee rate now exceeds even Cambodia, which had been the worst due to landmines, aid group Humanity & Inclusion said.

Such is the need that two medical centres said they were trying to reuse old prosthetic limbs recovered from people killed in the war. Others are creating makeshift artificial limbs with plastic piping or wooden planks, medics said, though this risks damaging the stump or causing infection.

Unfulfilled promise

Gaza’s amputees are a symbol of unfulfilled pledges from the October ceasefire and US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan envisaging full aid “without interference”.

It also foresaw the reopening of the Rafah border crossing – Gaza’s sole route out to Egypt – but medical evacuations including for amputees have been irregular.

Israel restricts imports of items it says have potential military as well as civilian use under a policy pre-dating the two-year war. While plaster of Paris and other plastic components for prostheses are not specified on Israeli lists of so-called dual use items, “construction products” are there, an Israeli export control document showed.

Israel’s COGAT military agency, which controls access to Gaza, says it facilitates the regular entry of medical equipment but will not permit materials that could be used by Hamas for a “terrorist build-up”.

Responding to questions about prostheses, COGAT said it is in dialogue with the UN and other aid groups to identify ways to enable an adequate medical response.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which supports the Artificial Limbs and Polio Centre in Gaza, the main centre for prosthetics, said imports of plaster of Paris have been almost completely restricted for over four months with supplies left only to June or July.

“What we are producing now are very small quantities compared to the actual need,” said Hosni Mhana, the centre’s spokesperson, without giving numbers.

The Qatari-funded Sheikh Hamad Hospital said no supplies have been received during the war and that it has run out. It can now only offer maintenance on existing prostheses. “There are no local alternatives for prosthetic manufacturing materials,” said the hospital’s General Director Ahmed Naim.

Humanity & Inclusion, which has fit 118 temporary prostheses in Gaza since early 2025, said supplies from its last shipment in December 2024 are dwindling.

The Trump-led Board of Peace, which has sought to boost aid for Gaza, said it took very seriously the hardships of amputees and other patients in Gaza.

“These are urgent civilian needs,” it said in a statement to Reuters, noting that the ceasefire obligations included the sustained flow of humanitarian, commercial and medical supplies.

Restrictions and delays are raised with the relevant authorities, it added. “We have significant guarantees and commitments that these restrictions will be eased and eliminated as armed parties agree to decommission their weapons and hand over authority to a Palestinian technocratic government in Gaza.”

Prolonged trauma

Artificial limbs cannot be imported whole into Gaza since they are built for each patient, with plaster used to take an exact cast of the residual limb to shape a custom-made socket.

Reuters interviewed three other Gaza amputees all struggling to resume their pre-war lives without prostheses.

Some of the amputees are on a waiting list and may have undergone preparatory work, which can include stump revisions, a form of surgery to hone its shape.

One on the list is Hazem Foura, a 40-year-old former office worker unable to work since losing his left leg above the knee in December 2024 when he says Israel bombed his house.

“I am not asking for the luxuries of life, I am asking for a limb so I can regain my humanity,” he said.

Lack of prostheses severely disrupts recovery and prolongs trauma for amputees, many of whom might have avoided limb loss had more specialist surgeons been available.

It also puts them in greater danger from ongoing Israeli attacks, which have killed 750 Palestinians since the ceasefire, Palestinian health officials say.

Israeli restrictions on items like wheelchairs have eased since the ceasefire, the ICRC and the UN children’s agency said, but medics said manoeuvring around Gaza’s rubble-strewn roads remains a challenge.

As well as materials, expertise is lacking, with only eight prosthetists still in Gaza, according to the World Health Organisation. Follow-up care for children is especially tough, medics said, since they need regular refittings as they grow.

“The amputation itself is not just a lost limb, it’s lost hope, it’s lost independence,” said Heba Bashir, prosthetic and orthotic technical officer for Humanity & Inclusion. “For the kids, it means losing their future.”

At least 16 people, including a 12-year-old child, were killed and several others were injured Russia’s drone and missile strikes in Ukrainian capital Kyiv, officials said on Thursday.

Fires burned out of control in parts of the capital, sending black smoke billowing into the night sky, as firefighters struggled to control multiple blazes. The morning saw residents and emergency crews cleaning debris scattered around heavily damaged buildings in the city.

Four people, including the child, died in Kyiv, mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Nine people were killed in Odesa, and two in the southeastern city of Dnipro, where Russian attacks set residential buildings ablaze, according to regional officials.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the night had proven that Russia did not deserve any easing of global policy or lifting of sanctions, with 100 people wounded alongside those killed.

“There can be no normalisation of Russia as it is today. Pressure on Russia must work. And it is important to fulfill every promise of assistance to Ukraine on time,” he said.

Air force units shot down or neutralised 31 missiles and 636 drones, but 12 missiles and 20 drones hit in the 24 hours to 7 am (0500 GMT) on Thursday, the air force said.

Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said rescue operations were ongoing and the toll could rise, while Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha urged the international community to act.

“All decisions required to increase pressure on the aggressor must be unblocked now,” he said on X. “It is immoral, counterproductive, and dangerous to delay sanctions against Russia or packages of support for Ukraine.”

Klitschko said that Kyiv came under another attack early on Thursday, adding that a drone, flying very low, slammed into an 18-storey building.

Prosecutors put the number of injured in the city at 54.

Klitschko said rescue teams had rescued a mother and child from a building in a central district where the ground floor was badly damaged. He also said missile debris had hit the sixth floor of an apartment building in the central Podil district.

A large fire had broken out in a building in a district in the north of the capital and four emergency medical workers were injured, while debris had fallen in several locations, Klitschko said.

Dnipro, Odesa under attack

Nine people were killed and 23 injured in an attack on a high-rise building in the southern city of Odesa, officials said.

“Last night, the city came under several waves of missile and drone attacks,” Serhiy Lysak, the head of the local military administration, wrote on Telegram, reporting damage to infrastructure facilities and a residential building.

The regional governor said that port and critical infrastructure facilities in the city had also been damaged.

In Dnipro, regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha said that two people were killed and 30 injured in an evening and overnight attack on the city; he posted pictures showing residential buildings ablaze. Another man was killed and four people injured in the surrounding region, Ganzha added.

In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in the northeast, officials said two people had been injured in drone strikes.