Tamil Nadu chief minister M. K. Stalin on Thursday burnt a copy of the proposed delimitation bill, calling it a “black law” and accusing the Centre of trying to turn Tamils into “refugees” in their own land.
The act took place in Namakkal, where he is campaigning, hours before Parliament met for a special session. Wearing black along with party workers, Stalin raised slogans and set the document on fire.
“Poradavom, Velvom ondraga” (Let us struggle, win together) was among the slogans heard at the site.
In a statement, Stalin said: “Let the flames of resistance spread across Tamil Nadu. Let the arrogance of the fascist BJP be brought down. Then, the fire of resistance against Hindi imposition that rose from Tamil Nadu scorched Delhi. It quietened only after Delhi was forced to yield.”
“Today, I have reignited that fire by burning the copy of this black law and hoisting the black flag against this black law that seeks to turn Tamils into refugees in our own land. This fire will now spread across the Dravidian land. It will rise, it will rage, and it will bring the BJP's arrogance to its knees,” he added.
The protest follows his call a day earlier for demonstrations across the state against the Centre’s delimitation proposal, which he said would harm Tamil Nadu’s interests.
Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday night called the bill an “attempted power grab” through “gerrymandering.”
“What the government is proposing now has nothing to do with women’s reservation. This amendment is an attempted power grab using delimitation and gerrymandering,” Rahul wrote on X.
Gerrymandering is the deliberate manipulation of electoral district boundaries to give one political party, incumbent, or group an unfair advantage over rivals.
It involves drawing irregular maps to pack opposing voters into few districts or crack them across many, reducing their voting power.
The term is derived from Elbridge Gerry, the Democratic-Republican Governor of Massachusetts in 1812.
The leader of Opposition also said: “We will not allow ‘Hissa Chori’ from OBC, Dalit and Adivasi communities by ignoring the caste census data. We will also not allow Southern, North Eastern, North Western and smaller states to be treated unfairly,” he wrote.
Rahul also raised concerns over how the delimitation exercise would be carried out.
“One of the BJP's dangerous plans is to “gerrymander” all Lok Sabha seats to its advantage for the 2029 elections. The proposed Bills remove all Constitutional safeguards on delimitation, giving full power to the Delimitation Commission which the govt itself will appoint and direct. We have seen how BJP does this - it hijacked delimitation in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir, where it split up anti-BJP regions and communities for electoral advantage. As a result, some seats have 25 lakh voters, while some have only 8 lakh, some seats have 12 Vidhan Sabha segments, while some have only 6, some seats are broken into pieces without connection, sometimes divided by rivers or mountains. Having captured the Election Commission, PM Modi is confident that he can capture the Delimitation Commission too,” he wrote in another post.
“The Congress will not allow this to happen. Delimitation should be based on a transparent policy framework, developed after wide consultations with a consensus. Indians of all communities and States should feel confident that they will be represented and their voices will be heard. This is the only way forward to protect and strengthen our democracy,” he said.