Abhishek Banerjee, the MP from Diamond Harbour, represents approximately 20 lakh people. On the other hand, Sudip Bandyopadhyay, an MP from North Calcutta, represents approximately 15 lakh people. Cast the net a bit wider and the disparities only widen. The MP from Lakshadweep represents only 48,000 people whereas the MP from Malkajgiri in Telangana has over 30 lakh constituents. Cast it narrower and, funnily, the disparities still remain. Two assembly constituencies in Delhi, Cantonment and Vikaspuri, have 78,800 and 4,62,000 constituents, respectively.
Clearly, the job of each of these representatives is vastly different in magnitude. Equally, it means the value of the vote of a voter in Diamond Harbour is 1/41ths of the value of a voter in Lakshadweep. Is a Calcuttan from Diamond Harbour only 2.43% of a Lakshwadeeper in India’s democracy? Where do we draw the line?, a recent publication by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, highlights a list of such potential aberrations caused by the skewed delimitation processes at the parliamentary and assembly levels. One person should have one vote which should have roughly the equal value everywhere in the country appears to be its implicit argument.
This is why the current, high-octane sparring over delimitation is necessary for Indian democracy. The Tamil Nadu chief minister, M.K. Stalin, fears that if done on the basis of population, Tamil Nadu will lose seats in the Lok Sabha in comparison to the more populous states of the north. This, he claims, amounts to penalising Tamil Nadu for successfully implementing population control measures. As a result, delimitation has effectively become a referendum on the success of population control.
Conceptually, this framing is flawed. Delimitation is about effective representation. One of the factors responsible for determining representation is population. But as the example of seats reserved for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes shows, representation is also about identity. This has been further bolstered by the recent Constitution amendment reserving seats for women which embodies the emancipatory power of representation. Population is certainly a factor in the mix, but it cannot become the sole factor to demarcate constituencies.
The Jammu and Kashmir Delimitation Commission understood this well. It recommended 136,304 constituents as a base for creating and re-arranging constituencies. However, it also allowed for a 10% deviation from this ideal. It drew some unnatural constituency boundaries to create a relative parity between constituencies. Population was an indicator, not a mandate. Political calculations appeared to matter even more.
This is why, with delimitation of parliamentary seats due in 2026, the southern states are justifiably worried. If delimitation is going to be an exercise based on political gains and losses, it will not only lead to gerrymandering boundaries but also violate a fundamental principle at play — federal fairness. Allocating seats to different states must be based on a well-accepted understanding of what it means to be a state in India. Tamil Nadu is right to raise this question — an artificial sameness cannot be imposed on vastly different states.
At the time of Independence, the organisation of seats was based on an understanding of what states were not. They were not independent groupings based on religious or any other partisan affiliation. A positive conception of what they were was not reached till states were reorganised along linguistic lines in 1956. Even then, while there was an unspoken understanding that the Indian Union would consider each state sovereign and equal in its own subject matters, some states were more equal than others. That is why smaller states received preferential treatment through a larger allocation of Central funds in Centrally Sponsored Schemes whereas larger states were made trustees of their smaller counterparts.
More than seven decades on, this compact has succeeded in maintaining the unity of India while maintaining a working compromise of federal fairness. Perhaps this is why Yogendra Yadav has recently argued for freezing the current distribution of seats in Parliament for all times to come. This is intuitively attractive as a means of maintaining a fragile peace. But dig a bit deeper and it begins to unravel. A single MP cannot possibly effectively represent 3 million people as they do today. The equivalent number in the United Kingdom is 0.1 million and closer home, in Bangladesh, 0.56 million.
Equally importantly, it prevents a reasoned deliberation on how states are to be represented in Parliament. Should the principle of federalism reward richer states like Tamil Nadu with more seats? Or should states have their representation tied to achievement of key human development indicators, incentivising governments to improve their performance? At the same time, an even more fundamental question can be asked — what exactly is the role of an MP in an increasingly presidential form of government? If MPs are neither actively scrutinising legislation where their vote is determined by the party whip, nor contributing to making policy, which is being handled mostly by the executive, can we radically rethink the nature of the MPs’ role and, consequently, the number of MPs?
Opening up these fundamental questions may be precisely why Yadav is worried — a pragmatic stance, yet one that is ultimately short-sighted. If nothing is done today, a time will come when representation in Parliament will become so skewed that frustrations might boil over. Today, Stalin and some of his counterparts from South India may be upset but have refrained from making radically destablising statements. Things may not be as rosy the next time this debate surfaces. 2025 then will appear like a missed opportunity.
As Atal Bihari Vajpayee memorably said in Parliament, parties may come and go but the nation must go on. It is time for the Union and the states to sit together in an all-party meeting and negotiate a workable federal compact. Not only should that compact delimit constituencies in a manner that ensures effective representation but also embody federal fairness in the allocation of seats to states. If India is to exist as we know it today, states must matter. But so must the people who live in them. One cannot be at the cost of the other.
Arghya Sengupta is Research Director, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Views are personal