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Journalism of Courage
The new year has started with the Election Commission kicking off the process of delimitation of Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies in Assam. The EC had announced on December 27, 2022 that the government had asked it in November to re-draw constituency boundaries in Assam, where delimitation has not been done since 1976.
Within a week of the announcement, the process of data collection through the office of the Assam Chief Electoral Officer has started. While the EC has said it will formulate its own guidelines for the process, no time frame has been announced. The most-recent delimitation exercise, that of Jammu and Kashmir, took a little over two years to complete.
What is the importance of delimitation?
Boundaries of Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies are required to be updated from time to time to ensure that the population size in each seat is roughly the same. The basic principle is that one vote should have the same value, irrespective of the constituency. Apart from population, geographical features, boundaries of administrative units and connectivity are also considered.
Why is delimitation being done in Assam alone?
The Constitution says boundaries of Assembly constituencies should be updated after every decadal Census, but through amendments in 1976 and 2001, the process of delimitation was put off for 25 years each time. So far, delimitation for the whole country has been carried out four times — under Delimitation Acts in 1952, 1962, 1972 and 2002 — and remains in abeyance till 2026.
During the last delimitation, which was completed in 2008, the government decided to leave out Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland, as well as Jammu and Kashmir. For Assam, the government cited security concerns and the potential for disturbing law and order, among others, when it put off the exercise through an order on February 8, 2008.
In 2020, the government set up a Delimitation Commission for J&K, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland. But a year later, in March 2021, the government omitted the four North-Eastern states when it extended the tenure of the Commission. The commission, headed by Justice Ranjana Desai, went on with redrawing the boundaries of J&K, giving its final award in May 2022. Now, the government and the EC have revived the delimitation plan for Assam, but are yet to state publicly what led to the decision.
Why is EC and not an independent Delimitation Commission?
The Election Commission is empowered to carry out delimitation of Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur and Nagaland, as per Section-8A of the Representation of the People Act, 1950. The section says “if the President is satisfied that the situation and the conditions prevailing” in the states are conducive for conducting delimitation, then he or she may rescind the deferment order.
An order under the same section was issued by the President on February 28, 2020, saying that there had been “a significant improvement in the security situation”, allowing for the delimitation exercise in all four of the states.
Why is the 2001 Census being used?
According to Article 170 of the Constitution, the population numbers to be used for drawing boundaries of constituencies would be as per the 2001 Census until the first Census after 2026 is published. In the case of Jammu and Kashmir, the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 passed by Parliament had mentioned the population in the 2011 Census as the basis of delimitation.
What are the Opposition’s concerns?
Opposition leaders, while saying that delimitation is required, have questioned the use of the 2001 Census figures, given that 2011 Census data is available and the 2021 Census process is on.
Assembly elections in Assam are due in 2026. When the delimitation was kept in abeyance in 2008, one of the reasons was that the National Register of Citizens had not been finalised. The BJP too was among the parties at that time to say that delimitation should only be done when the NRC process is completed. Now, the Opposition Congress in the state has pointed out that the NRC issue remains unresolved.
Another issue being flagged by the Opposition is that a day before the Election Commission’s freeze on any new administrative units from January 1 came into effect, the Assam Cabinet approved the merger of four districts into the districts they were carved out of, one as recently as January 2022. While Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma said the reason for the move was “administrative exigencies”, the Opposition has alleged this was done so that the population of districts is balanced with majority community-dominated areas, giving the BJP an advantage when the new constituencies are drawn.
