The census, delimitation and election cycle is haunting Indian democracy and the crisis it has brought is starkly visible in Assam, more than any other state. While West Bengal is battling large scale voter deletions with the Special Intensive Revision, Assam went through something similar almost an election cycle ahead, in 2019, with the National Register of Citizens (NRC). What followed the NRC was the delimitation exercise in Assam in 2023, which modified its electoral boundaries in a way that calling it anything but absurd would be an understatement.

The delimitation of Assam has always been controversial with the local population opposing the draft electoral boundaries proposed by the Delimitation Commission. This opposition did not just come from the Muslim population, whom the delimitation process targeted to suppress their representation. Overall, the number of constituencies where tribal populations have a population base has gone up, while the number of constituencies where Muslims live have gone down.

But beyond this, the constituencies themselves have been shaped in a way that no matter how elections are held, the groups that dominate a constituency numerically cannot change. Here is an attempt to visualise these maps geographically.

Geo-referenced document of the electoral boundaries of Assam. Source: Delimitation........

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