The Delimitation Bill debate is only the opening, not the final act
Recently, the Indian government introduced three bills to Parliament for changing the size and composition of the Lok Sabha (the House of the People). This exercise combined three seemingly different objectives: Providing 33 percent women's reservation in the Lok Sabha, adjusting seat allocation for states (reapportionment), and redrawing the political boundaries of constituencies (delimitation).
For the Lok Sabha, India has adopted a population-based representation system. The Constitution stipulates that, so far as practicable, the ratio of allocated seats to population will be the same for all states. Further, to accommodate changing population, the reapportionment and delimitation exercise is required to be repeated after every Census. At the time of the Constitution's promulgation, this principle was seen as uncontroversial. In fact, some members of the Constituent Assembly were seemingly enthusiastic about more frequent delimitations. Prof KT Shah had noted: "It is true that if your Census is a decennial affair, it may not give you the correct guide for every election in the interval between two Censuses assuming that elections come at least once in five years, if not more frequently."
With the passage of time, this democratic principle started to conflict with the objectives of population control and regional representation. States such as Kerala that invested in education and healthcare saw their birth rates plummet faster than those of other states, resulting in relative population share decline. Following the logic of population-based reapportionment, this implied lower representation in the Lok Sabha. An added complication arose due to regional patterns in demographic trends. Fertility decline and population growth deceleration were much more pronounced in southern and eastern states compared to northern and western states.
It became obvious that following population-based reapportionment would not only disincentivise investment in female education and healthcare, but also lead to representational skew against certain regions. A constitutional amendment froze the delimitation exercise in 1976 to maintain the status quo. A similar decision in 2001 extended the freeze to 2026. This freeze is set to expire this year.
In parallel, efforts to increase the participation of women in Parliament by reserving one-third of seats gained momentum. Bills amending the Constitution to reserve seats for women in Parliament and state legislative assemblies were introduced in 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2008. The Women's Reservation Bill was finally enacted in 2023, with the condition that actual implementation would be deferred until new Census figures became available.
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