The Centre on Tuesday unveiled the contours of its plan to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha from 550 to up to 850 and reallocate seats to states on the basis of the 2011 census, prompting the chief ministers of two southern states to lodge an intense protest.
M.K. Stalin and Revanth Reddy, the chief ministers of Tamil Nadu and Telangana, respectively, said the southern states would be put at a disadvantage for having controlled their population. DMK leader Stalin threatened a mass agitation like the tumultuous anti-Hindi protests of the 50s and 60s.
With the proposal to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to a maximum of 850, the freeze on the number of seats allocated to every state and Union Territory in the Lower House that has been in effect since 1976 will be lifted. The current allocation is based on the 1971 census. One-third of the seats in the expanded Lok Sabha will be reserved for women.
These are the key changes proposed by the government in the three-bill package — the Delimitation Bill, 2026; the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026; and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026 — circulated among Lok Sabha members on Tuesday afternoon ahead of the special session of Parliament later this week.
While the government had sought to project the fast-tracking of women’s reservation — over which there is consensus — as the key reason for calling a special session of Parliament in the middle of election season, the big takeaway of this legislative package is the contentious issue of redistribution of seats based on the 2011 census.
Article 82 of the Constitution allows readjustment of Lok Sabha seats and redrawing of constituency boundaries after every Census, but successive governments have dragged their feet on such delimitation for 50 years, including the Vajpayee-led NDA dispensation, because of the uneven growth of population.
The delimitation bill provides for the setting up of a Delimitation Commission that will decide how to reallocate seats between the states and Union Territories, and redraw constituency boundaries. A limited delimitation exercise was completed in 2008 when constituency boundaries were redrawn without increasing the number of seats in each state and UT.
Hours before the bills were unveiled, Prime Minister Narendra Modi underscored the urgency of implementing the one-third reservation for women in legislatures, warning that any delay would be a “gross injustice”.
Now that the bills have confirmed the worst fears of the southern states, a political showdown between the Treasury and Opposition benches in the special session appears inevitable. The Opposition has been accusing the government of rushing with the amendments without due consultations, only to derive electoral mileage in the forthcoming Bengal and Tamil Nadu Assembly polls.
Responding to the Prime Minister’s open letter to women, Stalin put out a video message on X, headlined: “Hon’ble Prime Minister, this is Tamil Nadu’s final warning. This video serves two purposes: to speak about the grave danger that has now reached the very door of Tamil Nadu, and to issue a clear warning to the Union BJP government.”
In his message in Tamil, Stalin accused the Centre of “forcibly” convening a special session of Parliament in the midst of elections to “bulldoze through” a constitutional amendment on delimitation, warning of a 1950s-1960s-style agitation — a reference tothe anti-Hindi movement in Tamil Nadu.
“India will once again witness the spirit of the DMK of the 1950s and 1960s. Do not mistake this for a threat. This is a warning…. If Tamil Nadu is affected, then we will make the entire nation take notice. Hon’ble Prime Minister Modi, I repeat, this is the final warning issued to you from Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu will fight, Tamil Nadu will win,” the DMK chief said.
In Hyderabad, chief minister Reddy of the Congress stepped up his attack on the NDA government at the Centre over delimitation, alleging that the Prime Minister was trying to increase thenumber of seats in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat at the cost of southern states.
Congress general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal said: “Under the garb of bringing forward women’s reservations, the BJP is looking to bulldoze a deeply flawed, unconstitutional and anti-federal delimitation exercise.... Delimitation fundamentally alters the political future of a state, and using the 2011 census will punish states that made great progress in matters of family planning and development-led population control. When the fresh census is about to begin, why is the government keen on using 15-year-old data?”
CPM Rajya Sabha member John Brittas said these bills reflect a “cunning strategy” to reduce southern India to a political colony of the north.
“When concerns were raised about the declining representation of southern states, the Prime Minister and other leaders claimed there would be ‘a proportional increase in seats for all states equally’. However, the draft bills offer no such guarantee. If delimitation is carried out based on the 2011 census instead of the 1971 census, seats in the northern states will surge dramatically, while the representation of southern states will shrink or stagnate,” he said.