Assam delimitation: Cong stays away from EC meet, other parties attend but agree with its stand

On December 27, 2022, the EC announced the plan for delimitation of parliamentary and Assembly constituencies in Assam based on the 2001 Census, after years of deferral. The last time the exercise was carried out in Assam was in 1976. While several states saw a fresh round of the exercise in the first decade of the 2000s, it was deferred in Assam multiple times because political parties opposed it citing that the updation of the National Register of Citizens was on.

On Monday, the EC held meetings with 10 political parties and 55 organisations in Guwahati.

On the Congress staying away, Assam PCC president Bhupen Borah said a delegation from the party had met the EC on January 4 and submitted a memorandum detailing the concerns, for which they were yet to get a reply.

“On March 22, we said that we heard that you are coming to Assam, we want to discuss the issues we had raised. Then I was called and informed that they will talk to us at the meeting. They called 11 political parties and gave a time of three hours. That means every political party would get at most 15 minutes to speak… If the EC does not respond to a memorandum submitted by us and if the primary opposition party, along with all other parties, is given time of only 15 minutes, then we believe that the EC’s visit is merely a formality,” he said.

In the memorandum submitted to the EC in January, the Congress had stated that the situation has not changed as regards the reasons for which the delimitation process in the state had been deferred in 2008, since the NRC updation process has not been concluded. It also opposed the usage of 2001 Census as the basis for the exercise, stating that the reliance on figures more than 20 years old would result in “artificial delimitation”.

Opposition parties which attended the meeting raised similar concerns with the EC. In its memorandum, the Assam Trinamool Congress said that “without finalising the entire process of NRC, without identifying the foreigners, the purpose of postponement of delimitation exercise in Assam in 2008”, the exercise will serve no purpose. It also questioned the use of the 2001 Census.

The Assam Jatiya Parishad told the EC that the “post-1971 Bangladeshis are still not detected, deleted and deported from the state” and hence any Constitutional exercise like delimitation process cannot be undertaken.

The Opposition parties want the delimitation process to be put on hold till 2026, when a freeze on the number of Lok Sabha and Assembly seats in any state is limited. Any changes in boundaries till then has to be done within the overall number.

“Delimitation was deferred in five states of the Northeast but now it’s happening only in Assam. It seems suspicious, which is why we want it to happen in 2026, together with the rest of the nation and when the number of seats can go up,” said AIUDF leader Aminul Islam, adding that it is but natural that after 52 years, the number of seats will go up.

In their submission, the BJP and ally Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) submitted that Upper Assam — which is identified with “indigenous” Assamese population – should not be “penalized” for having lower population growth than the Lower Assam districts of Dhubri, Barpeta, Goalpara, Nagaon, Bongaigaon, and Barak Valley districts, which have a higher concentration of Bengali-origin Muslim population.

The BJP memorandum to the EC says: “… delimitation, if done, purely on the arithmetic calculation of populations, may result in reduction of Constituencies in the region (Upper Assam). It may be ensured that such decrease in constituencies does not take place as this would not only amount to penalizing people for compliance with a government policy but also ironically encourage competition for higher population growth in certain areas.”

Both parties have also asked for smaller constituencies if required to give representation to smaller communities in the state.