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More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

The ‘D’ word—Why southern politicians are wrong on delimitation

Hopefully, this can be my last post on the women’s reservation constitutional amendment bill (and delimitation), which was defeated on Friday, 17 April, in the Lok Sabha by a united opposition.

The elephant in the room is the D word, delimitation. Delimitation is a constitutional requirement in all democracies. It is periodically undertaken usually after every major census. A statutorily appointed Delimitation Commission looks at the census population figures and tries to equalise the total population in each constituency so that each vote has roughly the same value. This implies that states where populations grow more slowly than the rest will lose seats, while those which see growth will gain. This is in keeping with the most basic democratic principle that each person’s vote must have the same (or roughly equivalent) value. If a populous state’s vote value is worth only 0.75 percent that of someone in a less populous state, it is a violation of the one-person-one-vote.

The D word has become a dreaded one in Indian politics because it involves a political powershift, though only in terms of Lok Sabha seats. Delimitation happens regularly within states and local bodies.

Fear of loss of Lok Sabha seats may be real, but the flaws in this argument should be obvious to anyone who is not a southern (or opposition) politician.

First, the assumption that less seats means less power is, of course, not quite correct, for power does not flow only from legislative strength. It comes for the size of the economic power that a state wields too. No matter how many Lok Sabha seats Tamil Nadu has, its status as an economic powerhouse (No 2 in state GDP after Maharashtra) will not reduce, unless laws are specifically designed........

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