Apr 14, 2026 13:38 pm IST

Opinion: The Great North-South Debate, And Prickly Questions About 'Fairness'

A strict population-based delimitation could produce a Lok Sabha in which a handful of large northern Hindi-belt states hold a permanent majority, enabling them to shape national policies even against the preferences of the rest of the country.

Shashi Tharoor Shashi Tharoor Dr Shashi Tharoor is a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development and the former UN Under-Secretary-General. He has written 15 books, including, most recently, India Shastra: Reflections On the Nation in Our Time

Shashi Tharoor Dr Shashi Tharoor is a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development and the former UN Under-Secretary-General. He has written 15 books, including, most recently, India Shastra: Reflections On the Nation in Our Time

The ongoing debate over delimitation and parliamentary representation, provoked by the government calling a special three-day session of Parliament this week to debate constitutional amendments on the Women's Reservation Bill (but really to alter the delimitation of constituencies in the North's favour before the 2029 elections) has reopened one of India's most sensitive political and constitutional fault-lines.

The core question is: how should a diverse federal union balance the democratic principle of "one person, one vote" with the need to ensure that smaller states or states with slower-growing populations retain a meaningful voice in national decision-making? The issue has acquired renewed urgency as population growth diverges sharply between regions, raising concerns that strict population-based seat allocation could deepen the emerging North-South divide.

This dilemma is not unique to India.

The European Union has grappled with a similar challenge for decades: how to design a representative assembly for a political union in which Germany and Malta, or France and Estonia, must coexist as equal members. The EU's solution - degressive proportionality - offers a useful framework for India's current debate.

Europe balances democracy and federal equity through a clever formula set into law under the Treaty of Lisbon. Under it, the European Parliament is built on three constraints that together preserve both democratic legitimacy and federal balance:

* A minimum threshold: No member state can have fewer than six seats.

* A maximum ceiling: No state can have more than 96 seats.

* An........

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