Published Apr 21, 2026 | 11:39 AM ⚊ Updated Apr 21, 2026 | 11:39 AM
Anyone opposing the BJP's attempts to push through a Constitution Amendment Bill to facilitate delimitation is trolled online. (iStock)
Synopsis: Delimitation made sense in an era when population growth was a given and representation had to keep pace with it. But today, the more urgent question is not how to redraw constituency boundaries — it is whether expanding Parliament serves any national purpose at all, when the Parliament we already have has largely failed to deliver on the promises.
Sometimes we need to change the question to arrive at the right answer.
Over the past few weeks, the main discussion among many educated, middle-class Indians has been about the delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies — which methodology should be adopted, which Census should be used as the benchmark, and so on.
Anyone opposing the current attempts by the BJP to push through a Constitution Amendment Bill to facilitate delimitation is being met with a torrent of online trolling. Some pro-delimitation voices are challenging people like me: “If you don’t accept this formula, then tell us what formula delimitation should use.” Others are peddling nonsense about “automatic delimitation” that will supposedly kick in and prove detrimental to South India.
Before answering those questions, let us understand the history of delimitation.
In 1952, India began with a Lok Sabha seat count of 494. The second delimitation in 1963 increased this to 522. The third, in 1973, raised it further to 543. The fourth delimitation in 2002 only redrew internal boundaries without adding any seats.
Related: The 131st Amendment Bill is South India’s disenfranchisement
While delimitation was initially planned after every Census, within three decades, it became clear that population growth across states was far from uniform. Increasing seats purely based on population would seriously disturb the power equation between states, and this concern has never gone away.
Even today, the variation in population growth between North and South Indian states remains one of the principal reasons for opposition to any delimitation exercise. Southern states, driven by higher literacy rates and effective implementation of family planning programmes, have long seen their Total Fertility Rate (TFR) fall below the replacement level of 2.1.
The TFR across southern states now stands between 1.5 and 1.7. Telangana, for instance, has one of the lowest TFRs in the country, at around 1.5, which means the state’s population will begin to decline in roughly 10 to 15 years. The day is not far when several South Indian states will witness not growth, but a shrinking population.
This raises a fundamental question: if we justify increasing Lok Sabha seats on the grounds of population growth, does the inverse logic not hold as well? Should we then reduce seats in states where the population declines? In an era when many states are staring at demographic contraction rather than expansion, why are we even debating an increase in parliamentary seats on the basis of population growth?
Related: Delimitation — a question that needs different answers
Here is where we must step back and ask the bigger question, the one that rarely gets asked amid the noise of constitutional arithmetic.
It has been 79 years since India became independent. Yet the people of this country have not seen development commensurate with the vast resources this great nation possesses. Be it mineral wealth, fertile land, abundant water, a favourable climate, or brilliant human capital, India still languishes as a third-world nation.
Social media is flooded with videos by young Indian tourists who have visited far smaller and resource-poor nations like Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Vietnam, which show better infrastructure and a higher quality of life than what the average Indian experiences back home. More strikingly, even the capital cities of war-torn Iran or poverty-stricken Ethiopia appear to have better planned urban infrastructure than many of our cities.
Our infrastructure is crumbling. Crores of young Indians cannot find employment, and even those who are employed live under the shadow of job losses due to automation and AI. Farmers are not receiving remunerative prices for their produce. Communal tensions are eroding the very foundations of the nation. A war in the neighbourhood is threatening our economy and daily lives.
At a time when these are the pressing issues demanding our collective attention, our ruling party has thought it fit to bring in a Bill that would increase the number of Parliament seats from 543 to 850.
Will such a change address any of the major problems facing the country today? Will it have even an iota of impact on the common man? No.
Related: Delimitation, democracy and federal balance: An Ambedkarite view
What it will do is add a few more elites to an already bloated system, and result in additional expenditure of hundreds of crores on conducting Parliamentary sessions that have increasingly become irrelevant to the very citizens they are supposed to serve.
Delimitation made sense in an era when population growth was a given and representation had to keep pace with it. But today, the more urgent question is not how to redraw constituency boundaries — it is whether expanding Parliament serves any national purpose at all, when the Parliament we already have has largely failed to deliver on the promises.
Sometimes we need to change the question to arrive at the right answer. And the right question, right now, is not about what formula has to be used for delimitation. It is about whether India needs a population-based delimitation at all.
(Views are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu).
