Centre moots inter-State redistribution of Lok Sabha seats based on 2011 Census

Centre moots inter-State redistribution of Lok Sabha seats based on 2011 Census

States that have stabilised their populations could see their share of representation in Parliament shrinking if proposals in the drafts of a Constitution Amendment Bill and a Delimitation Bill circulated by the Centre become law.

The Budget Session is reconvening on Thursday to consider the Constitution (131st) Amendment Bill and the Delimitation Bill, which the government says are aimed at expediting the implementation of 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies.

The Congress said the government was using women’s reservation as a facade to railroad inter-State redistribution of Lok Sabha seats without consultation, and ahead of the 2029 general election. “We will oppose this backdoor delimitation. We are 100% for women’s reservation and demand its immediate implementation within the existing strength of the Lok Sabha and Assemblies,” Congress MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi said. “In the proposals there is not a whisper of the repeated assurance by the government that the inter-State seat distribution percentages will remain intact.”

The proposals emphatically seek to change the seat distribution — indeed, that is stated in the objects and reasons of the Constitutional Amendment Bill itself. The statement notes that “while the freeze of seats on the basis of population figures of the 1971 Census served an important policy purpose, the country’s demographic profile has since undergone substantial changes, as reflected in the population figures of the latest published census, including significant inter-State and intra-State population shifts.” The draft Delimitation Bill mandates that “it shall be the duty of the Commission to readjust, on the basis of the latest census figures, the allocation of seats in the House of the People to the States.”

If these proposals are enacted, the Hindi heartland States will see their share of Lok Sabha seats rise from 38.1% to 43.1%, while the southern States will see theirs shrink from 24.3% to 20.7%.

In combination, the Bills propose an inter-State redistribution of Lok Sabha seats based on the latest Census figures and an increase in the size of the Lok Sabha to a maximum of 850 seats — 815 for States and 35 for Union Territories — against the current ceiling of 550, while carving out 33% for women.

Under the existing constitutional scheme, Lok Sabha seats are distributed between States on the basis of the 1971 Census and within each State on the basis of the 2001 Census. Article 82 provides that this arrangement will continue “until the relevant figures for the first census taken after the year 2026 have been published”.