States Campaign For Fair Representation In Lok Sabha Post 2026 Census

India’s five Southern States, namely, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Kerala, have begun a vigorous campaign to preserve their representation in parliament in the face of the central government’s bid to change the distribution of seats in the Lok Sabha as per the projected population change in 2026.

The national census, delayed by five years for one reason or the other, is to be conducted in 2026.

The southern States are worried that they would lose seats because they had reduced their population growth through progressive economic, educational and social development programmes, while their Northern counterparts would gain seats because they have not controlled population growth.

The northern States, with a galloping population, have been poor performers in education, health, economic and social development.The southern States complain that while they will be punished for good performance, the northern States will be rewarded for bad performance.

Let’s take the population growth between 1971 and 2024 in Tamil Nadu and the undivided Northern State of Bihar (including Jharkhand). During 1971 and 2024, the electorate grew by 171% in Tamil Nadu and 233% in Bihar. Tamil Nadu now has 39 seats while undivided Bihar has 54.

If delimitation is done now, and constituencies are redrawn to match population growth, the number of seats for Tamil Nadu in parliament would be much lower than those for Bihar.

According to a calculation published by The Hindu, if the plan to carry out delimitation in 2026 is implemented, and if the plan is to match delimitation to the envisaged increase in the total number of seats in parliament from 543 to 848, Uttar Pradesh’s representation would up by 63 seats; Bihar’s by 39; Rajasthan’s by 25; Madhya Pradesh’s by 23; Tamil Nadu’s only by 10; Andhra Pradesh’s by 12; Karnataka’s by 13; and Kerala’s by zero.!

“If such an injustice is forced on us, the DMK and Tamil Nadu will never accept it. We will never compromise on our future and the welfare of our State. We will stand together, fight, and win our State’s rights,” Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin told members of his party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DNK), in a video message.

Stalin further said that the proposed delimitation exercise would challenge the “Tamils’ birth right to fair representation.”

In an effort to defuse the crisis, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the number of parliamentary seats for Tamil Nadu would not be reduced. But Stalin pointed out that Shah had not assured that the representation of other States would not be disproportionately increased.

Tamil Nadu might still have its current lot of 39 seats, but the northern States would have increased their seats as per their population growth. Tamil Nadu would be dwarfed more than it already is with 39 seats. Tamil Nadu’s voice in parliament will be lower than before, if the Lok Sabha membership is raised to 843, pointed out Congress leader P.Chidambaram.

DMK and Congress MPs from Tamil Nadu also point out that with 848 members in the proposed parliament, the time allotted to each MP will be very small and opportunity to speak very infrequent. As it is, parliament does not meet that often and even if when it does, debates are not long and frequent enough.

India does not have a fixed parliamentary calendar. By convention (i.e. not provided by the Constitution), parliament meets only for three sessions in a year. The time allotted to speak depends on the size of the political party, with the result, MPs from the smaller parties get as little as three to five minutes. Also the bigger the total membership of the parliament, the smaller the time given for speeches.

Stalin held an all-party meeting on March 5 to discuss the delimitation issue though the local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stayed away. However the meeting unanimously recommended that the present system of having 543 MPs and the present State-wise distribution of seats be retained for 30 years.

The reasoning was that this will allow the Northern States to control their population growth and get on par with the Southern States to ensure a level playing field. The decision to freeze was taken also to prevent States with a higher population growth from getting “rewarded” with a higher number of MPs, at the cost of other States with better health indices and lower growth.

The number of seats in the Lok Sabha now (543) was based on the 1971 Census when India’s population was 548 million. The number of seats was frozen in 1973 to encourage population control measures. However, in terms of controlling the population, the States in the South performed much better than the northern States namely Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

In 2001, Parliament enacted the 84th Constitutional Amendment Act. This allowed the Union government to readjust and rationalize the boundaries of parliament constituencies. This adjustment was to be based on the 1991 census. The amendment also froze delimitation until the “first census after 2026” that is after the 2031 census.

But the BJP government ignored the dictum “first census after 2026” and is going ahead with delimitation “by 2026”.

It is suspected that the BJP is wanting to increase the number of seats in the northern States and reduce those in the Southern States before the 2030 parliamentary elections. The idea is to increase the BJP’s tally of MPs from the north Indian States since it is strong there. The BJP is weaker in the South. The southern States also have lesser seats and fewer MPs to offer.

Constitutionally, India is both a “democracy” and a “federation of States”. ‘Democracy’ means ‘rule or government by the people’. It follows that the government is elected by the majority with the broad principle of ‘one citizen-one vote-of equal value’.

However, the one person one vote principle had been diluted for two reasons: 1) to encourage population control 2) to accommodate the principles of federalism.

In a federation, all States are equal and this equality requires some adjustments in the democratic structure. In a federation like the US, the number of seats for a State in the House of Representatives is based on the population of the State. But in the Senate, all States are treated equally, each State entitled to only two Senators.

In the US, the number of seats in the House of Representatives is 435 for 50 states, mainly apportioned by population. The membership of 435 was capped in 1913, though the population of the country increased almost four times from 94 million in 1911 to an estimated 340 million in 2024.

The Tamil Nadu all-party meeting of March 5, took a cue from the US system and made a similar demand – “cap membership for 30 years.”

Tami Nadu’s leaders have suggested that MPs and leaders of both regional and national political parties from South India, smaller States in the North, and the North Eastern States, should consider it their responsibility to demand such a cap in order to protect the political interest of the regions they represent.

Cover Photograph: All party meeting of southern states for a united campaign for equal parliamentary representation.