Ranchi, June 10: Assembly Speaker Inder Singh Namdhari has decided to constitute a committee of MLAs from all the parties to work out how many members the Assembly should be having.

The committee will submit its reports during the ongoing session.

After the proposal is passed by the Assembly, a formal request will be made to the Centre in this regard.

This decision was taken at a meeting of the legislators belonging to different political parties. The members had assembled to discuss the necessity to increase the Assembly strength in wake of new moves by the delimitation commission.

Most of the legislators said the strength of the Assembly should be fixed on population basis.

They said though Uttaranchal and Chhattisgarh too were formed along with Jharkhand, their Assembly strength was comparatively bigger.

?Bokaro is the biggest Assembly constituency in the state. My assembly constituency, Dhanbad, is second largest in terms of both size and population. Its population exceeds 5.50 lakh. There are 3.50 lakh voters and 332 polling booths in my constituency. Reaching out to the voters is practically very difficult. A similar condition prevails in other districts as well. Therefore, the Assembly strength in the state should be doubled,? said BJP member P.N. Singh.

He argued that since Jharkhand?s population was one-third of Bihar?s, there should have been at least 108 seats in Jharkhand when it was carved out of Bihar.

?Though the Assembly seats of Chhattisgarh and Uttaranchal were increased proportionately, Jharkhand was left out due to reasons yet to be known,? he added.

BJP chief whip C.P. Singh, however, argued that nothing can be done now because the size of the state Assemblies will be reviewed after 25 years. At this, Namdhari clarified that the Parliament was empowered to make revisions if needed.

RJD member Girinath Singh said the scheduled areas needed special attention. More Assembly seats should be reserved for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. But, the delimitation commission intends to ?dereserve? some of the existing reserved seats.

As persons belonging to other categories cannot represent the reserved seats, a legislative council should be constituted to ensure proportionate representation.

Leader of the Opposition Sudhir Mahto said as the state population has exceeded 2.75 crore, there should be 135-140 seats in the House.

Chief minister Arjun Munda said now that the 2001 Census report has been published, the strength of the Assembly should be fixed accordingly.