Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin Tuesday has announced an all-party meeting on March 5 to discuss the issue of delimitation, saying it is “hanging over southern states like a sword”. Stalin’s announcement came two days after he said Tamil Nadu is facing a potential decrease in its parliamentary seats due to its family planning measures. Delimitation, the exercise that draws constituencies’ boundaries and decides its numbers, is expected to be held after the new Census exercise, which is much-delayed. As per the delimitation calendar set earlier, this was to happen by 2026, the same year as Tamil Nadu faces Assembly elections. In October 2023, while addressing a rally during the Telangana Assembly polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had used delimitation to attack the Congress’s “jitni aabadi, utna haq” slogan. “The country is now talking about the next delimitation. It will mean that wherever the population is less, the Lok Sabha seats will come down, and rise where the population is high… The southern states have achieved remarkable progress in population control, but will stand to lose heavily if the Congress’s new idea of rights in proportion to population is implemented… South India stands to lose 100 Lok Sabha seats,” Modi said. In an interview with The Indian Express during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Union Home Minister Amit Shah asserted that the Modi government was cognizant of the South’s concerns. “We have already said that there will be no injustice with the South after delimitation,” he said. In Independent India's history, delimitation has taken place four times – 1952, 1963, 1973 and 2002. A look at how these changed the political landscape. What is delimitation? The Election Commission defines delimitation as the process of drawing boundaries of constituencies for elected bodies based on the population in the most recent Census. Article 82 of the Constitution states that after every Census is completed, the allocation of Lok Sabha seats to each state must be adjusted based on population changes. At the same time, Article 81 states there can be no more than 550 members in the Lok Sabha – 530 from states and 20 from Union Territories. It also says that “the ratio between (the number of seats) and the population of the state is, so far as practicable, the same for all states”. So, each constituency across the country should ideally have the same population. Under these provisions, an independent Delimitation Commission is appointed by the President and comprises a retired judge of the Supreme Court or a high court, the Chief Election Commissioner and the State Election Commissioner. The Commission examines changes in the population to redraw constituencies or create new ones. After taking public feedback, the Commission publishes its final report. The history of delimitation Since 1951, the first Census after Independence, the decadal exercise has been carried out every year. However, in 2021, when the Census was scheduled, the Modi government put it off as it was at the height of the Covid crisis. However, since then, in an unprecedented delay, the Census has been consistently put off, with none scheduled in the foreseeable future. Accordingly, a Delimitation Commission has been set up on four occasions so far since Independence – 1952, 1963, 1973 and 2002. The 1952 delimitation exercise set the maximum number of Lok Sabha seats at 500. In the 1952 Lok Sabha polls though, elections were held in 489 seats. In 1957, 494 seats went to polls. In 1963, the Delimitation Commission made its first set of changes to the composition of the Lok Sabha. Noting that the average population per constituency had risen from 7.3 lakh to 8.9 lakh, the final order raised the total Lok Sabha seats to 522. In the process, Uttar Pradesh lost one seat, and Andhra Pradesh and the erstwhile Madras lost two each. Assam, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and West Bengal were among the states that saw their seats increase. In its 1973 order, the Commission raised the maximum Lok Sabha members to 545 to account for population growth and the formation of new states. Since then, the number of members has remained unchanged, though the two nominated posts for the Anglo-Indian community were removed in 2019. So the Lok Sabha strength is now 543. In 1976, during the Emergency, the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution froze the number of Lok Sabha seats and put off delimitation for 25 years until the 2001 Census under Article 82. The Indira Gandhi-led Congress government cited “family planning policies” as the reason for this suspension, saying it did not want to punish states with effective population control measures. The idea was to give states time to reduce their fertility rates and ensure parity across the country. But in 2001, delimitation was delayed for another 25 years, with the 84th Amendment under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led BJP government. Though constituency boundaries were redrawn to account for changes in population according to the 2001 Census, the total number of Lok Sabha seats and the number of seats allotted to each state remained unchanged. The Amendment froze the allocation of seats in Article 82 until “the relevant figures for the first Census taken after the year 2026 have been published”. What could the 2026 delimitation look like? According to the 84th Amendment, the next delimitation would ordinarily have happened after the 2031 Census. But with the 2021 Census delayed, it is not clear when it will happen. Before counting for the Census can begin, administrative boundaries must be frozen. The deadline for this was January 2024. During discussions on the women’s reservation Bill in the Special Session of Parliament, the government had said work on the Census would begin soon after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. However, this hasn't started, with the entire Census exercise taking up to two years to complete. Any delimitation exercise would presumably seek to allocate seats so that each parliamentary constituency has roughly the same population. This on paper means an increase in seats in states with high populations. Take Uttar Pradesh as an example. In the 1971 Census, on which the current seat allocation is based, UP had a population of 8.8 crore (including Uttarakhand). According to population projections from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, UP’s projected population was 23.1 crore in 2021, and would be 24.3 crore in 2026 and 25.1 crore in 2031. If the next population data becomes the basis for the next delimitation exercise, without a change in the overall Lok Sabha seat numbers, UP could gain an estimated 14 constituencies. The map below shows how many Lok Sabha seats each state and UT would get if they are allocated the same according to the projected population figures as of 2026, without any change in overall Lok Sabha seat numbers. The charts below show which states might see the biggest increase and decrease in their seat tallies, if the overall constituency numbers are not increased. Eight states and UTs would have more Lok Sabha seats, 16 will have fewer seats, and the seat tally will remain unchanged for 12. While northern states are the most likely to benefit from a reallocation of seats based on population, the states losing out on seats in such a scenario are mostly concentrated in the south. Of these, Tamil Nadu may lose the most. A 2019 analysis by political scientist Milan Vaishnav for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that to ensure proportional representation based on population projections for 2026, the Lok Sabha would have to expand to 848 members so no state loses out on seats.
