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Critical Topics and Their Significance for the UPSC CSE Examination on March 05, 2025

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What are the issues around delimitation?

For Preliminary Examination:   Current events of national and international importance

For Mains Examination: GS II - Polity & Governance

Context:

There has been a renewed debate about delimitation after the issue was raised by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. The delimitation of constituencies for the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies is to be carried out on the basis of the first Census after 2026.

Read about: 

What is a Delimitation Commission?

Census Exercise

Key takeaways:

• Delimitation refers to the process of determining the number of seats and defining the boundaries of territorial constituencies in each state for both the Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies.
• This task is undertaken by the Delimitation Commission, which is established through an act of Parliament. Past delimitation exercises were conducted based on the Census figures of 1951, 1961, and 1971.
• The total number of Lok Sabha seats was fixed at 543 following the 1971 Census, when the population stood at 54.8 crores. Since then, this figure has remained unchanged to promote population control initiatives.
• However, a revision is scheduled to take place after the first Census conducted post-2026. With the 2021 Census delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, discussions have emerged linking it to the upcoming delimitation process.

Key Issues in Delimitation

Over the past five decades, India's population growth has been uneven across states. Northern states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan have experienced significantly higher growth rates compared to southern states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. Two possible approaches to delimitation are being considered:

1. Retaining the current number of 543 seats while redistributing them among states.
2. Expanding the Lok Sabha to 848 seats, proportionally increasing representation across states.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah recently assured that no state would lose its existing seat share and that any increase would be implemented on a pro-rata basis. However, the criteria for this proportional allocation—whether based on the current seat distribution or projected population—is unclear.

If future seat allocation follows projected population figures, southern states, along with smaller northern states like Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, as well as northeastern states, may receive fewer seats compared to larger northern states. This could potentially disrupt the federal balance, diminishing political influence for regions that have successfully controlled their population. Currently, southern states hold a 24% share of Lok Sabha seats, which could drop by 5% under such a system.

Possible Solutions

• Democracy is based on the principle of one citizen, one vote, one value. However, this principle has already been adjusted since 1976, when delimitation was first postpone