Listen to this article:

Months after the Narendra Modi government faced its first failure in parliament to get a constitutional amendment Bill passed when a united opposition defeated its delimitation-Lok Sabha expansion legislation plan, speculation is now rife that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government is looking to reintroduce the legislation. While on one hand the BJP is looking to shore up its numbers in the Lok Sabha through a spate of defections, on the other, statements from the saffron party’s key ally, Telugu Desam Party (TDP), that any such new legislation would include a uniform 50% increase in seats across states has only added to the speculation.

The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) released a working paper last month in which it recommended a “targeted” criteria for splitting seats in the next delimitation of parliamentary constituencies, that, while respecting largely 50% increase per state, goes beyond population distribution, links it to boosting future voter turnout, particularly among women. 

Experts said that while a 50% increase across states may face less opposition, it also is only one of the concerns of any delimitation exercise being sought under the BJP as concerns of gerrymandering constituencies remain.

According to former IAS officer K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty, a Member of Tamil Nadu’s High-Level Committee on Union-State Relations, the claim of uniform 50% increase in Lok Sabha seats across states comes with an inherent contradiction.

“Once the freeze on Lok Sabha seats at 1971 Census levels is lifted by deleting the relevant provisos of Articles 81 and 82, population-based delimitation of Lok Sabha seats based  on the relevant Census population figures would automatically kick in,” he said.

“This would reward the Hindi heartland States and a few others that lagged behind in implementing India’s population policy, significantly recasting the federal balance. Increasing the Lok Sabha seats uniformly by 50% for all the states would mean that the relative weight – a state’s percentage share of the total strength of the House – would be maintained. In other words, the current relative weight of each State would continue to be applied to the expanded House of 850 seats without disturbing the federal equilibrium.”

Shetty said that such a uniform increase on the other hand does not provide any conceivable political gains. 

“While such a promise was orally made, its absence in the text of the Constitution (131st Amendment Bill) debated in April 2026 rendered it unacceptable. There is no political advantage to be conceivably gained by such a 50% uniform increase for all States unless the intention is to significantly alter the boundaries of all the Lok Sabha constituencies (now reduced in area) using this opportunity,” he said.

Also read: BJP’s Rejiggered Strategy on Delimitation and Women’s Reservation Is No Less Worrisome

On April 17, the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, that sought to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 850 seats to “operationalise women’s reservation” failed to receive the required support from a two-thirds majority of members present and........

© The Wire